Save the cat applied to my writing.

Based on advice to which I opposed with plenty of passive aggression, I did a "save the cat" introduction.
It might need some professional editing to really shine, but I can see benefit now.

Chapter 0 – Spirits of nature.

Two two-pound coins in my hand, like treasure, with their gold rims and shiny silver cores. The most satisfying of all the coins, I thought, with their heavy weight, large and flat, like the gold coins of the pirate age. They felt lucky somehow. I rubbed the coins together as I walked up Penglais hill through a light sprinkle of rain. My breath ran out quickly. It always made me feel out of shape, that hill.

Four pounds. Enough for a hot pasty, and a coffee. Maybe two coffees. That's how much my budget allowed after blowing my student loan on all those pints in the Angel; four pounds a day. That's plenty, I thought. A bit of food and good coffee is all a man needs.

About a third way up the hill, a man sat on some steps with a guitar, humming and singing and whistling some blues. I needed to catch my breath, so I sat on a railing. The music and the fresh air helped me feel a tiny bit better about what I was about to face. My head still hurt, and I was stressed to the hilt, but the music felt good. It helped. Freedom howled from his lips. I let his sounds wash over me, and it eased my inner-pain like a hot bath eases sore joints. He seemed perfectly in line with his divine purpose. Now that's a guy who knows how to live. Music had an effect on me like nothing else in the world. It hit me right in the soul. Filled me with bliss.

He finished the song and I walked over to him. I couldn't see his face, it was covered in long mousy brown hair. He wouldn't look up at me, he was too deeply engrossed in phonic meditation. He held a plectrum to his guitar and ran it through his strings. A new chord was brought to life from the lustrous bronze. The twang rang out like a ripple into the atmosphere and changed the entire mood of Penglais Hill. Other students tackling that long hill perked up and smiled more brightly. It coloured the world.

I threw a two pound coins onto his guitar bag. I could go without the pasty. I wasn't very hungry anyway. Music and good coffee is all a man needs. ‘Nice music,’ I said.

‘Aye. Cheers,’ he said in a Scottish accent.

I continued on a boring walk to the top of that long hill, across a long suburban road, though an area that turned to sheep fields and backwoods, down another long hill to the campus in the neighbouring village, far away from the main campus. My legs ached.

I went through the entrance. The receptionist looked up but I didn't have time to acknowledge her. I went straight up to a blue door with a small square window, where I had been summoned to.

I looked through the window. The clock above him said it was quarter past one. Dread flooded my veins. I was due there at midday. My eyes dropped back to him. He was looking right at me. ‘Will you stop gawking through that window and come in and sit down please?’ So I hurried into his tiny office.

He gestured to a plastic school chair. My arse bones crunched into the hard bumpy plastic, pinching and crushing my thin flesh. I tried to lean to one side then the other, but no. My bony arse just ached. And that posh boy opposite me looked quite satisfied and comfortable in his luxury swivel-chair in soft padded leather. I was grubby, sore and hungover. And I hated every second of being there.

They called him my mentor, but I barely knew him. And he looked too young. He was about my age, twenty-three, maybe younger. He looked too proud and smug to be my mentor. His shirt looked expensive. His blue cashmere jumper was thick, clean, fresh. Trousers pressed. Shoes shiny. Nails filed. Fat hips. Neat ginger hair combed to one side. I, on the other hand, wore a leather jacket that was older than me, falling apart, cuffs frayed, buttons missing. My jeans had holes in the knees and crotch. The soles of my boots flapped and were held together with black tape. My nails were bitten into red scabby stumps. I was skinny as a bone, and my hair was like a discarded mop. It was demoralising to sit before him in my sorry state.

His office oppressed me too. It was cramped and narrow – more storage room than office. The blue blinds, flaky paint, thin carpet squares, his white veneered desk and Bic biros all looked cheap and horrible, and it was cold, not at all what I expected from Aberystwyth University. Prince Charles studied there – that was their big claim to fame. The brochures showed epic lecture halls inside the majestic old college building with its golden sandstone spires, Gothic architecture and stained-glass windows. They nicknamed it ‘Hogwarts’ because it looked so magical on the seafront next to the ruins of an ancient castle. But no one had lectures in there. It was all bullshit. We had our lectures in the local red-brick college a mile out of town. Thirty of us crammed into tiny classrooms with our breaks taken in a tray-and-slop canteen full of goofy sixteen-year-olds. It was not what I envisioned at all.