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.

Mum

I'm sure this isn't going to be the last time that I talk about my Mum. Indeed, she's already featured.

This isn't, I think, going to be one of those stories about an unnaturally strong attachment to a mother. For much of my childhood my mother appeared tired, impatient and angry.

That's because she was clearly all of those things.

She was working hard (nights as a nurse, a stint as a dinner lady - making ends meet kinds of things) whilst trying to make the time to be there for her family.

She could be wildly unreasonable (I will always remember a blow-up she had at me because I'd not done something that she'd forgotten to ask me to do - "I'm not psychic!" I shouted at her..."well you should be!" she shouted back!) but she could be gentle and poetic too (singing songs about Fred in the back seat of the car....putting together imaginative games for me and my friends at parties where you had to pretend to be different types of firework).

A lot of the time she seemed so disappointed. Life's letdowns were so crashingly tiresome but, at the same time, inevitable.

There's one memory that's always stayed with me.

I always knew that she was brainy and that she'd wanted to go to university but wasn't allowed to by her parents. I remember asking her how she felt about "having" to cook and clean for these three boys all the time instead of "going out to work like Dad". She said that that's what she was meant to do - that it was her lot in life.

I felt so sad for her. It seemed so wrong.

Waving goodbye

I can seriously only remember two things about nursery (pre-primary school). Firstly - there was the fact that every day, my mum would drop me off at the front door and say a quick goodbye. I'd then go to each and every window of the building, waving goodbye to her as she walked back down the street. I'd be devastated if she didn't turn around and wave at each instance.

The second is me sitting, cowering in a teepee with Carl, whilst a psychotic and hyperactic kid called Nicholas ran round and round the outside beating the walls of the tent with his fists over and over again. He was constantly out of control like this. He wore white trainers with green go-faster stripes on them. He's divorced with two children now.

Oh yeah - one more thing. Coathooks with animals on them.

What's your earliest memory?

Why do so many biographies feature (or even start with) the line "my earliest memory was this..."? Does anybody really remember something like that with any repeatable precision?

Surely it's a matter of a recollection here, an image or word there. Or maybe it's just me.

For me, yes, it's a number of things.

My mum hanging my teddybear by their ears on the washing line - I'm handing them out of the window to her.

Me sitting in the pushchair - it's Winter and there's a front to the pushchair to keep me in and keep me warm - and it starts trundling down the steps in the back garden towards the gate because the brake hasn't been applied.

Going into the kitchen before bedtime, wearing my PJs, to say goodnight to my dad who's on the floor making a fort for my brother and me out of plywood. It's got battlements and a portcullis which goes up and down thanks to a piece of string that's going to be broken in a couple of weeks time.

Rolling around on the floor of my recently cleared bedroom singing "playroom...playroom...playroom".

It's just one or two memories. I'm not sure if any of them are the first or the earliest. I can't think of anything else or anything more precise.

Do they say something about me?