Gregarious Lonerism

I've already mentioned how my 'default position' would be one of 'loner-ism' but that didn't stop me having a number of great friends, many of whom I still value today, many years later.  It also didn't stop me being a 'lonely loner' at times.

My satisfaction with my own company was often read by others as aloofness.  In some respects I'm sure that it, in fact, was.  Did I think that I was better than them?  In honesty, I'm sure I did.  Did I yearn for their company and what they did?  Rarely.  Although the parties and nightclubbing were a source of fascination and, at times, jealousy, when I did get invited I'd more often than not start wanting to go home at around the 9 o'clock mark, having exhausted whatever real or feigned interest I might have had in those present.  And when a party did pass muster in my view it was usually one with four or five people present rather than forty or fifty ('that's not a party' I heard cry - I disagreed).

I was often described as gregarious and, indeed, a flirt.  When circumstances required it I was the life and the soul of the party, caring more about the enjoyment, satisfaction and entertainment of others than for myself.  That doesn't mean that  I didn't, in fact, crave solitude and my own company simultaneously.  That doesn't mean that I didn't find the effort exhausting.  And that doesn't mean that I didn't (and don't) find the lack of other people caring about my happiness or satisfaction irritating.

To my friends, my bouts of lonerism and, indeed, aloofness was equally baffling.  At the time of various school trips, when a group of friends was well established by then, my propensity to (rather dangerously, perhaps) go on excursions entirely alone must have been strange.  And 'Don't complain that no-one cares about you when you don't tell us when something's wrong' was an occasional complaint as well.
 
Drinking helped.  Indeed I started early.  Mum and Dad were enlightened in that respect - working on the basis, I'm sure, of preferring to have youthful inebriation conducted in the safety of one's home rather than at the bustop at the end of the road.  I'd always, however, be the first to return to the bar (needing more to drink and/or having had a conversation reach its natural conclusion).  I'd always find myself exhausted after a particularly gregarious night - a combination of 'putting out' and being, of course, hung over.

What a sight we must have been though - an enormous gaggle of 17 year-olds, lying in the garden of the local pub - all as p***ed as each other.  One thinks that it's only today that large social gatherings are successfully conducted - thanks to social media.  In those days we spent hours on the phone assembling the necessary masses.  Highly successfully.

Years and years later, an esteemed professional psychologist on meeting me for the first time said,

"You need to be constantly 'on' - charming, gregarious and cheerful - for your job"

"I bet you'd rather be enjoying your own company wouldn't you?"

How did he know?

William Hartnell. Patrick Troughton. Jon Pertwee. Tom Baker. Peter Davison. Colin Baker. Sylvester McCoy. Paul McGann. Christopher Eccleston. David Tennant. Matt Smith.

I have, of course, got a variety of other unhealthy obsessions in my back catalogue.

Saturday lunchtime wrestling was a staple of most kids' lives in the 70s.  It was an absolute, un-negotiable feature in our household.  Dad would get home from golf with sticky buns and the TV would go on (the cleaning will have been done by this point....).  No-one didn't know who Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks were in those days.  ('easy...easy...easy').

Later in life, wrestling re-reared its head in the form of WWF.  Now - I blame L entirely for this - his house had cable and, all of a sudden, Wrestlemania and Royal Rumble were late teens (and beyond!) obsessions.  I did profess to prefer The Undertaker.  But, let's face it, any muscle-y man in pants was going to get my attention.  Including twice (or, indeed, three times) live.  Whilst at University.

Star Wars.  Still is.  I can still remember seeing the film for the first time.  Down on the South Coast, co-inciding with a visit to the grandparents.  I can remember my Mum (or perhaps it was, in fact, my Dad) saying, as they fastened my seatbelt in the back of the car afterwards saying "you've still got stars in your eyes, haven't you?".  I would have been no older than five.  I can definitely remember.

Figurines.  AT-ATs. X-Wings.  Snowmobiles.  Land Cruisers.  Canteenas.  Ewoks (whatever).  Lightsabers.  Millenium Falcolns.  Christ - it must have cost a fortune.  You wouldn't see me for HOURS.  Setting up scene after scene in my bedroom (my TINY bedroom) for reinacting all the way through or for just looking at, day after day.  Videos (I kept count of the times I watched the first film recorded from the TV - well over fifty in the first instance).  Directors Cut.  Wide Screen Version.  DVDs.  I'll still watch it, happily, today.  It will be no surprise to the reader that I, too, consider the three prequels to be pointless disappointments.  Star Wars is film and story-telling perfection.  Good vs Evil - OK it's been done before - but never better.

And Doctor Who.  It was "Queer as Folk" that revealed to me that Doctor Who is, for some reason, a particularly gay obsession.  I most definitely teared up when Vince asked Stuart whether he knew all the names of the Doctors in order.

William Hartnell.  Patrick Troughton.  Jon Pertwee.  Tom Baker.  Peter Davison.  Colin Baker.  Sylvester McCoy.  Paul McGann. Christopher Eccleston.  David Tennant.  Matt Smith.

Doctor Who is also story-telling perfection.  No matter what people have said in more recent times about things getting too complicated, it's successful because it's not - The Doctor, The Tardis, The Sonic Screwdriver, The Companion(s) and, of course, the Daleks.  You don't need to know anything else.

Yes - i know - I'm nearly 40.

i wanna live for ever.....

I've aleady mentioned that "Fame" was my film of choice and, as ever, it was a wildly inappropriate choice for a ten year old - swearing, nudity, grainy 80s arthouse-y-ness!

But the TV show was a different story entirely.  And the records.  And the multiple viewings of the Albert Hall concert on video.  And attending the "Dance into Spring" Tour at Earl's Court.  With Mum and Dad.

There are a variety of obvious reasons why a kid of my disposition will have found something to love in "Fame".  The wish-fulfillment of going to a school where loving music wasn't an unusual activity or a sign of weakness.  The dancing and singing in the cafeteria.  The dancing and the singing in general.

But the music was great.  It really was.  I wore the LP all the way through, wildly conducting to "We've got the Power" and "Desdemona".   I watched the "High Fidelity" sequence a hundred times.  I sang and cried to "Starmaker" even more times.

I, of course, wanted to be Bruno - the keyboard playing composer with the wild, shaggy hair.  But I wanted to be with Danny.  The wisecracking italian comedian and actor.

I still love it.  Its energy, passion and its message has been, in part, replicated in 'Glee'.  But it was the original and the best.

Lee Curreri is still a musian.  Debbie Allen directs.  Gene Anthony Ray is gone.  And Carlo Imperato is, I think, a hot tub salesman.  *sigh*

Oh Captain My Captain!

I had a variety of utterly inspiring teachers at school and, indeed, some slightly less inspiring ones too. 

Mr K introduced me to opera - something I will be eternally grateful for.   He let younger students join the Sixth Form Theatre Club for when the trips were to ENO and not to the West End.  My first experience was therefore Jonathan Miller's Rigoletto and the rest is history (he says, listening to Tristan right now).

Mr W was an extraordinary character.  He claimed to have been a judge on Come Dancing before his teaching days and, indeed, his choreographic abilities were brought into play for a school production or too.  For some reason he was profoundly unpopular with other members of my class - something that I found particularly baffling.  I was even told by a member of IR (she knows who she is) to stop smiling (and most certainly laughing) in his classes.  For goodness sake.  He had an extraordinary way of  encouraging a particularly writerly style in his students (you were guaranteed a higher mark if you addressed your essays to "My Dear Reader").  He did make a gaff or two though.  One was an extraordinary outburst at the class at the evils of sharing and copying work.  He didn't realise that a student had, by mistake, submitted their essay twice and that's why there was a certain familiarity around the content he was reading, the second time around.  The other one was slightly less forgivable.  He came in one morning extolling the evils of his trip to the theatre the night before - he'd never been more upset or offended - he'd been to see La Cage aux Folles.  Oh Dear.

He'd always promised a school trip to Petticote Lane to sample the best salt beef sandwiches in London.  It never happened.

Miss C was ALL about Anthony & Cleo - her 'friends, romans, countrymen' was awesome - as was her advice on how to handle the difficulties I was having with conducting the junior girls choir!  Miss L made maths achievable.  Mrs W was an inspiration to my music-making and, indeed, to my life in general.  Mr B got EVERYONE an "A" in Economics thanks to his particular techniques of fear and learning the factors for demand by rote.  Miss J took an extraordinary dislike to me and made it abundantly clear after a school play rehearsal once - not entirely fair I felt (and still feel now).  Mrs F put me on stage and made me dance - she wrote me the nicest card before opening night, commending (no doubt, inaccurately) my comedic skills.  She also was the only teacher to give me a detention (for bunking off games to rehearse a scene from Pygmalion) which she later retracted (when the rendition of said scene was so AWESOME no doubt!).  Mr R put me off History for ever (until most recently) but took pains to develop and commend even the most untalented of sportsmen (now - how often do you hear that about games teachers!).  Although Miss J wasn't necessarily an inspiration she most certainly provided the comedic moment of the year when she locked S in the stationary cupboard for bad behaviour - something that still gets mentioned every now and then these days!

Mr B - Headmaster.  An extraordinary man who made a suburban comprehensive school into a centre of excellence and achievement.  His standards were incredibly high and he took personal pains to encourage and enforce them.  From standing up when a teacher enters the room, to school uniform standards, to a sense of faith, to discipline, to a love for Geography, through to knowing exactly what was expected of you.  The best.  Soon after I left, he fulfilled his dream (I imagine it was his dream) to become Headmaster of an eminent school in London.  He also fulfilled his dream of marrying his Deputy Headmistress, Mrs P (later, of course, Mrs B).  He died tragically soon afterwards from leukemia.   Terrrible.  Tragic.  I'll always remember him.  Rest in peace.

Gone.

There are, very sadly, a variety of people from school life who are now no longer with us.  Such is the statistical inevitability of getting older.  The first was L who died suddenly soon after having left junior school.  I remember her as being one of the girls who 'acted' a scene to Joplin's Entertainer as I played it in the school hall.  Another was A who died of cystic fybrosis.  I remember him from being in the 'support team' on a scouts bike ride to Belgium.  Another was K who died in the Hillsborough Disaster.  We weren't friends and I have a variety of regrets about the way I felt about him before it happened.  I remember him - the day after it happened there was a band practice at school and there were many many tears.  We only just got through 'you'll never walk alone' at the memorial.  Another was R.  A fellow Star Wars nerd and a lumbering but jovial presence.  He died of cancer quite recently.  Another was C.  She played the bassoon and was a leading, friendly figure from school musical life.  She and I went to the same Uni.  I remember how pleasantly surprised I was when she came running over and hugged me on my first day.  We went to a James Brown concert together.  Another was K.  She was a crushes' best friend, intelligent, well liked and bafflingly dating J - the most datable guy in the year - they ended up marrying and having children.  She died suddenly and was remembered fondly at a school reunion a few years ago.  The crush can't go and see the children - they remind her too much. 

So sad.   Such is life.  Good to remember.  Right to do so. 

A friend, S, dated two of the girls on this list.  In a lighter moment he was wondering whether he was the 'black widow' of the year!

Dib f***ing Dib

I'm on the fence with my experience in Scouting.  My view changes depending on the time of day.  On one hand it something that I was entirely unsuited for.  I hated change and trying new things.  It was a place of conformity, noise, shouting and emerging testosterone and machismo.  I got put, at one point, in a "patrol" that was full of school bullies.  I assume the scoutmasters thought that it would be character-building for me.  My first camp was filled with dread at the impending "camp christening" that never, in fact, came to pass.  I still think about my first experience on a climbing wall and being frozen, a few inches from the ground, and receiving no help from the venture scout holding the safety rope below.  I still remember sharing a tent with a bunch of kids who would discuss, when they thought I wasn't there, but was in fact hiding in the dark, how much they didn't like me.  I remember having another tent all on my own because I had ringworm.  I still, as you know, count the gang show being on my long list of early stage failures!

But on the other hand it was a place where I could be a different person to who I was at school.  I could, at last, let off some steam.  There was an old man in the stores at the back - the quartermaster - who'd sort you out with tent pegs and suchlike.  There was a kid called R who told me all I needed to know about jerking off.  I was put, on other occasions, in sixes and patrols that were slightly more suited to a kid of my sensitivities and was properly looked after.  I developed an early crush on a curly-haired kid called N.  He was crazy - seriously so.  I finally cracked canoing and still remember the surprise on the scoutmaster's face when I was the first back from the other side of the lake.  Camp fires and the occasional cooking triumphs.  Lightweight camp wins and bike rides across Belgium.  Running wild and wide games.  Being given a lift from Roald Dahl when we were lost.  Catching the gits out in rounders in high summer - three times.  The nice sisters from ventures who'd just been to the Queen, a Kind of Magic concert at Wembley.  Getting drunk at the scoutmasters house and dipping someone's tie in his coffee and going crazy in the minigym upstairs. 

If I had kids I'd probably send them to cubs and scouts.  I'd want them to have the good times and the things that it did, in fact, teach me.  I'd desparately try to protect them from the bad and be devastated if I failed to do so. 

I still have a dream now and then about returning to scouts because I missed my last "parade".  I feel nervous, again, about the prospect (which I want to avoid) of "going up" into Ventures.  I feel that it would be easier and more sensible if I wasn't there. 

And my shirt's way too small. 

Performance Angst

I guess I got my musical inclinations from my grandfather.  It was his piano I used to bash away on as a kid, swapping one book of music for another and making, no doubt, the same interminable racket, come what may!

The first piano arrived at around the age of six or seven and left a still-remaining gash in the garage to kitchen doorframe.  A great deal, up to a certain point where lack of real or meaningful talent really came into play, came easily to me (moreso than my brother as I've already mentioned).  And I, perhaps ahead of my time, was soon ready for public performance.

The first forrays were pretty disasterous - a piano solo that stopped twice in its tracks (even after back-to-back practice during the first half of the concert) and some accompaniment to the junior choir that barely got started.

This was all around the time of the dying-days of my time in Scouts which involved a crashingly awful performance from my "patrol" in the Christmas Gang Show that left me more-or-less weeping in the leaf-strewn car park, outside the scout hut, crying "why again?" to the moon!  What a drama queen.

I don't think I showed the "classic" signs of stress when it came to performance.  As ever, such things are internalised and hidden.    My Mum and Dad were baffled by my distress at what I saw as crushing failure - although they might have been trying to make a small deal of it for my (or even their own) sake!

But I got better - before too long (in the grand scheme of things) I was the repetiteur of choice and, towards the end of my sixth form, performed the first movement of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 with some scraping from the school orchestra behind me (although D's oboe playing is still a pleasurable memory).

It was E's Mum who was the first to congratulate me that evening - my own parent's led with the "well - are you pleased?" line again - although they would be devastated, I'm sure, if they knew that I'd ever doubted their pride in that moment.

There is a large part of me that's tremendously pleased that I was encouraged to "keep it as a hobby" although I thought it was awfully defeatist at the time.  It gave me great pleasure and focus - although I resisted, at times, being stretched too far - and it gave me goals which I managed, in the majority to fulfil.  And at times it gave me a way to express myself where other forms of expression would have failed.

After a particularly violent ding-dong with my mother I sat down to do some piano practice and chose only slow, mediative and, I thought, calming pieces.  I even played the fast pieces at a deliberately slow tempo, to maintain the mood that I thought I was creating.  When my Dad got home, he asked my Mum what she'd been doing that afternoon.

"Listening to your son play the piano for me".

A handful of pills

I think my parents were quietly worried about me - especially in these early days.  If I discovered that my son had (happily, blythely) spent the majority of a day trip to Bologne on his own I, too, would have been worried for a variety of reasons.  They called my form teacher with concerns (as ever, handled clumsily by all concerned) and expressed sentiments of confidence when they spotted me happily dancing with someone at a school event (let's be clear - it was pensioners day - at which my parents were on St John's duty - wrong on so many levels). I once, too, overheard them asking each other what they thought was wrong with me (I sneaked off after hearing this - I was indeed in quite a funk at the time - but it was because I'd been musing, generally, at the time, on the theme of death as well as on my, as I saw it, future inability to afford a house of my own on my current savings position, even including future interest!).

I guess, on reflection, they did have cause for concern.  I was clearly not over-run with friends and my run-ins with school bullies had been noted and documented.  Indeed, I'd suffered a black eye in return for fraternising with the "wrong" girl in the class, I'd been pushed over a variety of times and I clearly enjoyed (if that's the right word) the company of some girls a few years my senior who would hang out by the music block prior to band practice rather than kids my own age.  And even though, on the surface, I was handling it all with my usual aloof stoicism, I'd spent a number of evenings wanting it all to end, by whatever means necessary, and had even spent one particular evening sitting on the bathroom floor with a handful of pills in my hand  wondering whether taking them all was a solution of some shape or form.

I guess the advantage that I had was that I knew, deep down, that it does, indeed, get better.  Even though I would say that I was lost and that things would never be the same again, I guess I knew that things always change, you always end up finding your way and that optimism is always better than the alternative.

Deep down, I guess that's what I knew.

Girlfriends

My first (not, in fact, only) girlfriend was around the age of 13-14.  I'd had someone who I'd held hands with momentarily, prior to that (prompting a great deal of soul-searching with my brother as to whether I should tell our parents or not), but E was most definitely a girl friend and we are best described as "on and off" for a number of years.  Indeed, the first time that we were "off", I didn't realise in the slightest until a number of members of our year came up to me and told me that they'd heard that we'd broken up and that I'd treated her terribly.  Indeed, the Number One School Bully in our year (there were numbers 2-9, all of whom were accolytes of his, some of whom are in prison, hospital or working in timber yards now) took it upon himself to give me a good menacing on the subject (he's also memorable in that he "offered me out" once on the basis that he was the "hardest of the hards" and I was the "hard of the stiffs" in my view, or so he thought - more on that, perhaps, another day).


And I really did try!  Our first kiss (with E not Number One Bully)(and I'm starting to think that it was our only one) was by the side of a dual carriageway, walking back to her house with a couple of other friends, from the railway station.  My overriding memory is of an overly soft wetness that I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

The ups and downs of my relationship with E, either as friends or as boy/girlfriends, was the catalyst, some times, to whether I had any friends at all.  Indeed, she held such sway over the small group of acquaintances that I had that people would, indeed, decide whether they would or could talk to me on the strength of her say-so.

It was with E that I sat in the back row of the cinema (Freddy Krueger movies during the daytime) furtively fumbling.  It was E who famously touched me up in the front row of the balcony of Les Miz.  It was E who gave me a very fruity pair of briefs with hearts all over them.  We're still friends today - we've not talked about our past for some time.

Chase Me!

So - it turns out that 1R wasn't, in fact, the bottom class - it was one of the two that were second from the top. The form teacher was a kindly woodwork teacher, close to retirement, with very exacting standards when it comes to the conduct that he expects in that first twenty minutes of the day. He kept someone behind once for answering "Oui" to the register, rather than "Yes".

I had, on reflection, quite a schizophrenic first couple of years. I was incredibly studious in class and, in the break times, I went to the strangest lengths to blow off steam. I'd taunt kids who were significantly older than me (some of whom were contemporaries of my brother - which can't have helped his case at all) and, for want of a better phrase, get them to "chase me". There's an irony here in that it made me a friend in TB - someone who wouldn't have been seen dead sitting next to me in class but who would approach me in break times and ask if I wanted to "get a chase".

I was top of the class in everything. Apart from PE and Home Economics/Technical Studies (we were the first year where boys and girls both had to do both - the boys would burn their scrambled egg on toast and the girls would get their fathers to produce intricate drawings of ballpoint pens). Further down the line it transpired that there was some debate about whether to move me into the top class in the year but the idea was ruled out in that I was "making friends" in 1R.... Kids don't exactly warm to other kids who are top of the class in everything. Indeed, the crazy Czech chemistry teacher ("are we having a smashing time?") berated the class mercilessly for groaning at the announcement of another high-scoring test result - "why you GROAN! you should RESPECT!".

I took my school report home once and showed it to my Mum who was having her hair cut in a neighbour's kitchen (the neighbour had the same name as my Mum and a similar taste in swirly carpets - their similarities ended when it came to smoking and divorce). "Look at all those Ones" my Mum said (referring to my position in the class). The hairdressing neighbour just rolled her eyes and groaned.

CB was a girl who I fought endlessly for my top slot with. She left, unfortunately, after the first year. My father was quite keen on her - I remember him laughing when she referred to me as her "number one rival".

I also remember a game of Kiss Chase (did we really play that at that age?) at Hatfield House where I was chasing her - a caught her and lived up to the name of the game - something that ellicited the response from CB - "blimey - I didn't think you had it in you!".

First Day in the Rain

The Americans attach so much significance to one's passage through High School. People who've attending private schools in the UK appear to do the same. But we don't tend to give similar weight to "senior school" if you're in the comprehensive system. Now that we're getting older and a tendency for nostalgia and reminisence has started to kick in, a "favourite memory from your school days" trend is starting to emerge - perhaps aided, uniquely, by facebook. Perhaps it wouldn't have emerged without facebook and school days nostalgia would be confined to the small niche who've taken the time to join a old boys/girls society. Who knows in this facebook-dominated world.

Anyhow - my first day at senior school. It was raining.

My mum was insistent that I would walk to school - start as you mean to go on. However, S's mother had other plans - especially as it was p**sing it down. She had a green Triumph Acclaim - as did we (it was inherited after my grandfather died and was our first car with electric windows - a real sign that we had finally arrived - I was later to put a rather large dent in the back passenger door as well as burn the seat upholstery with a carelessly-discarded cigarette).

I was already "different" from the other kids in that my school blazer was from the original school outfitters in North London rather than being from the new one in the local department store - the identifying feature being a "properly" embroidered badge rather than an iron-on one.

And we walked, S and I, into school and headed straight for an undercover walkway, of which there were many linking the various school buildings together. This particular area was packed full of children waiting, in the dry, for the day to begin. And the first person that I bump into is my brother. My brother and a couple of his friends.

They were laughing at me.

I ignored them and took a left into the school building and the assembly hall.

I have little memory of the headmaster's welcoming address. All I can remember is hoping upon hope that when the class allocations were read out that I wouldn't be in 1R. We had already received word, via S's sister, that 1R would be the bottom stream - the thickos. I was a little nervous in this respect because I didn't feel that the entry exam had gone particularly well for me - it was on the same day, incidentally, as the one and only time that our home football team made it to the FA cup final . We lost. The maths had been terribly easy. The "english" exam was a fill in the gaps affair. S felt that it had gone well (and this was later proved through his being selected for the Top Class (from which he was later demoted)). The fact that for one of his answers, he'd said "Washington" where I'd said the answer was "marvelous" gave me particular cause for concern. Given the fact that I was a certified "swot", the impending sense of forthcoming injustice was becoming too much to bear.

And which class was I summoned to join?

1R.

Go on, have a good cry

As I said, I was terrible at football. Indeed, I was terrible at all sports.

A direct result, I feel, was that there were many times when I was subjected to significant isolation. Sport is about being part of a team or a group. Not liking sport can result, perhaps, in the opposite.

Not that I remember this as being particularly painful but I'm sure it was the case. And besides, being isolated and alone at school can be about more than just not liking sports.

I would usually find my place in the order of things though. Sometimes it would be as a referee of a football game (until I sent one too many people off). Sometimes it would be just me and the new girl, sitting under the massive tree in the school field on the edge of the football pitch, swearing like sailors. On other occasions it would be just me and the psycho kid from nursery playing epic Star Wars-like adventures in the wasteland behind my parent's house (now a housing estate). Or it would be when every kid in the class came out from having their lunch and asked me what I was playing and whether they could join in. "We're playing at keeping order on the playground - your position is over there - keep order!" came the answer. That particular game didn't last very long.

Does an almost encyclopeadic memory of these sorts of childhood events constitute "dwelling unhealthily on the past"?

Crying, knee deep in "sinking mud", terrified as to what it reaching my neck would involve. Watching "the snoggers" in the local park. Making elaborate mazes in the long grass in the aforementioned wasteland. Watching the wasteland being dug up and seeing the first new residents move in. The fact that one of the new arrivals was a kid my age who was occasionally prone to wearing mesh, see-through black tee-shirts. See a kid gluesniffing down by the stormdrain in the park. Scaring some girls in the small woodland next to the stormdrain by whispering their names from up a tree. Losing the cat and looking in the woodland for her. The cat coming back. The Mayor coming to school and asking us if any of us were in the cubs. We were all in the scouts by then. Playing "The Entertainer" in the school hall whilst two of the girls from my class acted out a chattering mime to the music. One of them's dead now. Standing on a podium after having sung "away in a manger" as a solo for the second time, waiting for the applause that I was assured was going to come and didn't. Every birthday being marked by spanks from a metre rule, over the teacher's lap. Mrs R crying with laughter at the image of Charlotte trying to spin her web. Telling on SM for sniffing a PrittStick. My brother crying at the thought of having to deliver free papers to a road with lots of dogs. Country Dancing. Being good at Country Dancing. Sledging. Running as fast as I could. Running away from the kids half way down the street who wanted a "toll" to pass - the penalty for non-payment being a stone thrown at your back as you cycled away. Falling off SB's bike outside my house and my mum asking if I'd damaged the bike. Falling off my own bike and needing stitches. Not wanting (screaming that I didn't want to) to go to get the stitches done. Having ringworm. For ages. The cat nearly getting put down for "giving" me ringworm. My brother catching it too but a more common version. Mine was special. Never really believing in Santa. Or the toothfairy. Water fights in the street. Stick Insects. Being obsessed, for a limited period, about how old I was going to be when my parents died. Being obsessed, for a limited period, about the fact that my limited savings of £102 were never going to be enough to buy a house of my own. Spanking the cat. Spanking the monkey. A lot. Being disappointed at the inconvenience of something "resulting". Tickles. Debaggings. Iced Buns after Dad got home from golf. Chicken in a Basket at the golf club. The magician at the golf club. The smell of the golf club. Scary Mr T. Scary Mrs B. The particularly scary dinner lady.

When it was all over, on my last day at junior school, with so many more exciting and scary things ahead, with my pink school progress book sitting in my lap - finally in my possession for good - I felt sad. I felt as if something was lost that would never be gotten back.

"Go on, have a good cry" said my Mum.

Swot

Swot and Softy. The two words that I remember being associated with me - pre 11 years old.

School work did come easy to me - there's no doubt. From the age of 5-7 I was put on a class table that needed little attention from the teacher - indeed it was out of sight. I would get my work done in no time at all and spend the rest of the period in question acting out these fantastically detailed imaginations where my friend and I were child spaceheroes who had mechanical bird assistants called Quiet Wings.

At the end of Junior School, aged 11 therefore, I remember the teacher taking pains to remind us all that at our next schools we wouldn't be the brightest, the fastest, the best at football. Eyes turned to me - which I thought was unfair - I was terrible at football.

There's no doubt either that I was a softy. I hated conflict (I still do) and the closest I got to a fight was what could only be described as a "face off" with another kid - the stress of the instance shook me up so badly that I had to go home.

I was still confident however. I didn't care about being in this group or that group. I did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. The digs that were taken at me ("he's got pidgeon feet", "he's got the wrong bag/coat") were easy to brush off and my relative dearth of friends, every now and then, I don't remember bothering me. It did bother the teachers it seemed - I was shoe-horned into the second eleven football team (a disaster for all concerned) as well as the chess team (ditto). Such tribulations I, more or less, took in my stride - the kids didn't hate me, they didn't much like me in their droves either.

The parents' role is always interesting in the name-calling/labelling debate. "You don't want to be a softy like him" I recall a mother telling her kid, about me. Her son's, at the moment, unemployed and onto his second marriage. She must be so proud.

Trouble

I still think about the first times that I got into trouble - either at school or at home. I wonder why this is? Is it about not wanting to be criticised or is it just about wanting to be good and to do well??

Kids clearly thought of me as someone who didn't tend to get into trouble - because I can remember the startled reactions from when I did. I was told off in assembly once by the fearsome headmistress (I think I was talking when I shouldn't have been) and the joy that this provoked in a certain individual who was always getting ticked off by teachers still rings in my ears. Even though I would dress my naughtiness up (as I do now) with a smile and a dose of charm, I would still get told, every now and then, that I was stepping over the line. Indeed, a school report at the age of 10 warned against the dangers of over-confidence and arrogance. Not knowing what either term meant, my brother happily filled me in - "it means you're a cocky little squirt". I was so upset that I was told that I could rent a video of my choice for the evening. I chose the film "Fame".

I remember being given an enormous telling off for stealing an After Eight Mint. And I remember, most notably, being smacked for upsetting my brother. He was struggling through a piece of music - I think it was a depiction, for piano, of Robin Hood and his Merry Men - and I commented to the room that I thought it interesting that he was still working on this piece after quite some time. Little did I know, that the struggle next door was causing him significant pain and anxiety and my comment pushed him over the edge with the shout - "we can't all be f**king Liberace"! A smack and a slap I got for that.

Swiftnick and other prepubescent pervs

I am almost entirely sure that the first indication that I was "different" (although I didn't identify those feelings as "different" then) was my unshakeable attraction to Swiftnick from the Adventures of Dick Turpin.

I know.

I can remember one particular image from the children's novelisation that I would go back to again and again. It was a line-drawn illustration of Swiftnick - he'd been captured and was being questioned by some Sherriff of Nottingham-type figure. He was viewed, in the majority, from behind and he was, notably, stripped to the waist. His blond, curly hair was tied in a pony tail with some bow-tied black ribbon.

I have looked and looked for this book, in later life, but to no avail.

Thirty-odd years later I can still recall this picture and I can still recall going back to it time and time again. I'm sure, at the time, I didn't know why I was going back to it but there was clearly something about his back. His strong, muscular back.....

There was, in fact, something about homo-erotic imagery and imaginings, in general, that kept me coming back again and again. On many a night I would go to sleep, having this lengthy elaborate fantasy about being at some sort of futuristic boarding school where everyone arrived and was told to take off all their clothes. We were stood in cubicles - all of which faced the same way - towards a stage at the front where there was, perhaps, a hologrammed head, giving orders. The head would then order us to put on a type of loincloth worn by red indians.

Well - some people count sheep....

I even wrote all this up in a school project (this is all pre-11 by the way!) complete with illustrations.

What must the teacher have thought! Well, I'm sure there were other signs.

Video Nasties at Breakfast

I wasn't able to watch the film Assault on Precinct 13 again for over 25 years.

My parents were pretty liberal about the sorts of things we were allowed to watch on TV - they weren't the sort of 70s parents who thought that Tiswas and Grange Hill were going to corrupt their children (I knew some kids who had parents who thought that ITV was inappropriate in its entirety). We were allowed to watch all sorts of films and TV that were well beyond our reach in legal as well as accessibility terms. I still suspect that our viewings of 70s/80s american sex comedies were my parents' attempt at sex eduction.

And so it came to pass that Assault on Precinct 13 was rented from the dodgy bloke up the road who ran a video rental operation from his tobacco-smelling front room (until one of his technologically-challenged neighbours reported him and he had to transfer the whole shebang to a disused car sales forecourt on the other side of town).

Now, Assault on Precinct 13 was one of those films that was upsetting all sorts of people at the time. It wasn't quite being labelled a video nasty in the ways that Driller Killer and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were, but it was close.

My mum was working nights that week. She was working in the old folks home opposite the mental hospital. She'd come home smelling cold and slightly damp. She'd often cycle there and back on this awful, second hand, folding "ladies" bike. It was a light, metallic green.

So my dad, in her absense, let my brother and I watch this quasi-video nasty. But it was slightly longer than we expected it to be and our bed time came and we were sent to bed before the film finished.

He said he'd let us watch the end in the morning. And he did.

Big mistake.

Get up. Get dressed. Have breakfast. Go to school. That was the drill in the morning in our house.

Nowhere was "catch the last ten minutes of the video nasty you were watching the night before" part of the agreed routine. Mum came home during the said ten minutes and all hell broke loose - not because we were watching people getting shot, maimed and burnt alive by unrelentingly violent LA (?) gang members. But that the "proper" schedule wasn't being adhered to.

God she was angry. She was particularly angry at my dad. She was seriously, seriously angry.

The strength of her disapproval and the enormity of the conflict between my parents that the situation had created caused me a level of gut-twisting anguish that I have always, in a pavlovian fashion, associated with that movie.

I wasn't able to watch it, or consider watching it, without feeling a little (or a lot) of that gut-twisting anguish, for something like 25 years.

It's not actually that good a film.

Dad

So - to complete the picture. I've already mentioned the plywood fort offering and of course the golfclubs moment. But the majority of my dad memories are something like this.

My brother's O Level results. I clearly remember that Dad kept on going back to the sideboard, where the results slip was perched against the clock. He'd keep going back and he'd pick up the slip and smile. Clearly so pleased. Clearly so proud. They were, admittedly, very good results.

My GCSE results. My mum suggested that I call him to tell him my results. They were, admittedly, very good results. "Is that what you were hoping for?" was the response.

"How do you spell [such-and-such]"? "How do you think it's spelt?"

A crashing smack on the backside for (I thought) innocently questioning the fact that my brother was still playing the same piece in his piano lessons that he had been for months. The result was not only the said smack but also a tearful appearance, from around the corner, and the proclamation that "we can't all be f**king Liberace". No smack for the swearing - or for the suggestion that Liberace was the epitome of pianistic excellence. It was the 70s after all.

Sitting on the ottomon, watching his back as he shaved. Waiting for the moment when he'd splash water on his face, rub his face with the towel, and quickly turn around, roaring like a monster.

Screams of delight.

Brother

My brother always used to buy me thank you presents. After every one of his birthdays he would get me something to say thank you for the present that I'd gotten him. A Star Wars figure usually.

That was until one year when he said "if you don't mind - i don't think we'll do thank you presents any more".

I was gobsmacked - I didn't even realise that they were thank you presents. I thought he was just being nice. I was clearly taking them for granted but, equally, it was the last thing on earth that I would have expected him to have been doing in the first place.

He was the sort of brother who would arbitrarily come into your bedroom, sit on you, threaten to spit in your face and when your screams would bring a parent (slowly) running, he'd say that he was restraining you because you'd "gone berserk"! Oh the injustice! Oh the gut-clenching frustration of being the younger son!

He was the sort of brother who'd scream like a lunatic and the prospect of having to share something with me. The golf clubs incident is still pretty fresh in the memory. Not in the least because I didn't care that much. Seriously. Golf clubs.

And here he was buying me thank you presents. But not any more it seems.

And I'd never ever gotten him one.