It’s been quiet here at the Memory Project HQ thanks a recent three month trip around Australasia, however now that I’m back and my friends have harassed me at length I’ve finally got round to writing a new entry. So, as the evil twin of my tale of growing up gay in the Yorkshire countryside, here are my memories of those girls who’ve tried to be more than just friends:
My first girlfriend was a creature called Cathy McCoy, whose name is wholly unobfuscated here as I’d dearly love to be reunited with her. Cathy and I were best friends the moment we left the womb and – as I’ve noticed is common practice – our parents insisted we were sweethearts and would one day marry. For some reason we accepted this conceit and a happy few years were had living the dream: holding hands, frolicking in the garden ... actually, this is about as much as I can recall, although I do remember that we were utterly inseperable until we were about four years old and her parents moved to Darlington and I didn’t see her ever again.
That isn’t quite true. I think about a year or three later we went to visit the McCoys in Darlington, and it turned out we had nothing much in common anymore. They also lived in quite a grim house, and I sense that Mrs McCoy wasn’t married to Cathy’s father anymore. I suppose in this sense I didn’t ever see the Cathy I knew again, since instead I saw a paupered and broken version of her. Maybe I will obfuscate that name after all.
I stuck to boy friends after that – the variously queer John How and Alistair Howtown, as reported elsewhere in this blog – until I must have been about eight years old, and for some reason Alistair decided I needed a girlfriend. The relationship was formed as all relationships were back then: my friends convened with Sarah Barkur’s friends behind a curtain at the youth club disco to strike up negotiations (I seem to recall I was checking out Nicholas Cheetam’s naked body in the Home Economics room at the time – I suppose I’d forgiven him since Tiggergate), and then later the union was announced to Sarah and I without our participation.
“Okay”, I said, curious to see where this would lead. Sarah was after all a perfectly pleasant looking girl with strawberry blonde hair, and it couldn’t hurt to at least try having a girlfriend.
Regular readers might predict this wouldn’t work out well. Sarah and I had an awkward goodnight kiss, then the following morning at school (Youth Club was on a Thursday, this was all before alcohol was even invented) we acted awkwardly around each other for the first two classes, and then at breaktime Sarah sent an ambassador to my usual hanging out spot among the rocks at the back of the playground.
“Sarah is calling it off,” the diplomat explained. “Sorry, kid. Sometimes love ain’t easy.”
No indeed. That was probably my shortest ever relationship.
A few years later, when I was more comfortable with my sexuality and yet more certain of my lack of interest in the ladies, Sheila Polhammer invited me round to her house to assist with her math homework. She took me up to her room where we could concentrate on the math without disturbance from her insane Austrian father, but when we entered I was surprised to discover we would also be working without disturbance from our math homework. It was a tiny room, filled mostly with a bed.
“Sit down,” Sheila demanded, so I sat sharply down on the floor and got my math books out of my bag. “No, on the bed,” she insisted, packing my books away again.
We sat on the bed for a while, making awkward conversation. She asked me whether I was a good kisser, and I turned the question round on her by asking whether that was her four inch black and white television she had on her bedside table. This evasion tactic did not last long and Sheila moved in for a kiss. I moved about three feet back and asked quietly whether the portable television was battery operated or needed to be plugged into the wall. This was a limited coping mechanism as the room was only six feet wide and I didn’t have many more questions to ask about the specifications of her portable television. And so it continued, and so I grabbed my bag and ran out the door.
I was particularly popular during the second year at university, when Darien brought an extremely inebriated Penny Porter to my room and explained patiently and with only a hint of romance that “If you want her, you can have her.” I didn’t want her.
The same year Ted, Olivia and I went on a party cruise to Ely in a long boat which powered along the Cam. We’d been invited by the indomitable Rotsy, who’d taken the starring role in our recent production of Jeeves & Wooster. On the seemingly innocent pretext of going out to see the stars, she took me out onto the front deck and planted a long kiss on my lips.
Stunned, I didn’t know what to say. So I said the first thing to come into my head.
“You taste like pasta,” I said, meaning bland and wet.
“A good thing I like pasta!” she responded, meaning rich and spicy.
We spent a long time out there, her kissing me and me using diversionary tactics such as pointing out how quickly the trees went past, and how clever it was they used parallex scrolling to create the illusion this was all happening in real life.
At the end of that term I went to Denmark and unwittingly became husband to the pig-fearing Eleanor, as previously documented.
After graduation, Zack and I went off to America for a few months to sell books door-to-door. While living in Hershey our next-door-neighbour Michelle developed something of a crush on me. Michelle was not frightened about being forward, as demonstrated by her decision to write “I want to drink your hot cum” in permanent marker on the dashboard of our car. Early one morning the three of us went to the pub because it was raining and we didn’t feel like getting wet selling books door-to-door (in Southwestern terms, going to the pub just because it was raining was second only to child sacrifice in terms of evil). As the weather cleared up in the afternoon, Michelle suggested I should go selling in Anneville, and offered to come along and give me a hand. Being too drunk to walk straight, this seemed like a very good idea.
Well, would you believe it but turning up excessively drunk to try to sell books to middle class parents in a heavily religious town in which the sale of alcohol is forbidden transpired to be a really bad idea. Halfway through one demonstration Michelle decided to grope me, pulling open my flies, and to distract my potential customers I babbled too much about their fabulous fishtank. We were kicked out of the house, but if the owners thought that was the last they’d seen of us then they were very disappointed. They discovered us about five minutes later in the middle of their lawn: me virtually passed out from drunkeness, Michelle straddled over my inert body trying to pull my clothes off and screaming at me to fuck her.
It didn’t happen, thank goodness. I suggested we go back to the pub for more booze and – after about an hour of her screaming at me to go home and fuck her in her fucking water bed – Zack finally arrived to drive me home.
We moved away from Hershey the following morning.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Friday, 25 December 2009
Saturday, 21 November 2009
My father the policeman
Lying in bed the other day, I remembered a strange occasion when my father decided that six months imprisonment and a £5,000 penalty was insufficient deterrant to prevent him from impersonating a police officer. As I recall it, he pulled his car across the front of a double decker bus to force it to stop, leapt out of the car shouting at the bus driver to stay where he was under orders of the police, stormed the bus and up the stairs and then attempted to arrest two young teenage boys.
I was a young teenage boy myself, and my embarassment at his behaviour was matched in magnitude by the boys' absolute terror at being confronted by Gene Hunt. Thankfully, the arrest did not proceed, although he did march the boys off the bus to take their details before permitting it to continue.
My dad later claimed that the boys had been throwing bricks out of the top window down onto his car. As a passenger who was sitting in the backseat, who understands something about the momentum of buses and the sealed nature of top deck front windows, I cannot now confirm this is likely.
My dad was always prone to a little road rage, although of course this was before the term 'road rage' was invented. A few years later we were in Ireland, driving from Dublin to Tipperary, and a motocyclist overtook us. My dad took this as a personal slight and accelerated, overtaking the motorcyclist in turn. He of course then did the same, until the two drivers were trapped in an insane battle of speed, accelerating through the country lanes in a determined battle to beat the other, the cyclist waving his fingers in fury and my dad consumed with anger and bellowing abuse at the wheel.
It could only have a disastrous end. As we reached the Tipperary city limits and the speed limit felt to 30mph, my dad hit the brakes and the cyclist went flying into the back of the car.
My dad pulled over, but this time did not impersonate a police officer. The rest of the family was petrified as of course a fist fight would be the only way to settle this, but in fact things were suddenly incredibly amicable. I think probably because it turned out they were both English, and it isn't very English to argue in public. My dad apologised if his bumper got in the cyclist's way, and the cyclist - peeling himself off the tarmac - apologised if he'd done any damage to my dad's car. They shook hands and went on their way.
The closest my dad ever got to driving a police car was after we'd had a long boozy dinner up at the Spite with Kath, Alan and Helen, when he was too drunk to realise the car alarm was still on (but not, it seems, too drunk to drive). Motoring home, the car lights started flashing and the alarm blaring at full volume, in a satisfying imitation of a police panda car. Fortunately we did not attract the attention of any real officers, otherwise he might have got to ride in a police car for real.
I was a young teenage boy myself, and my embarassment at his behaviour was matched in magnitude by the boys' absolute terror at being confronted by Gene Hunt. Thankfully, the arrest did not proceed, although he did march the boys off the bus to take their details before permitting it to continue.
My dad later claimed that the boys had been throwing bricks out of the top window down onto his car. As a passenger who was sitting in the backseat, who understands something about the momentum of buses and the sealed nature of top deck front windows, I cannot now confirm this is likely.
My dad was always prone to a little road rage, although of course this was before the term 'road rage' was invented. A few years later we were in Ireland, driving from Dublin to Tipperary, and a motocyclist overtook us. My dad took this as a personal slight and accelerated, overtaking the motorcyclist in turn. He of course then did the same, until the two drivers were trapped in an insane battle of speed, accelerating through the country lanes in a determined battle to beat the other, the cyclist waving his fingers in fury and my dad consumed with anger and bellowing abuse at the wheel.
It could only have a disastrous end. As we reached the Tipperary city limits and the speed limit felt to 30mph, my dad hit the brakes and the cyclist went flying into the back of the car.
My dad pulled over, but this time did not impersonate a police officer. The rest of the family was petrified as of course a fist fight would be the only way to settle this, but in fact things were suddenly incredibly amicable. I think probably because it turned out they were both English, and it isn't very English to argue in public. My dad apologised if his bumper got in the cyclist's way, and the cyclist - peeling himself off the tarmac - apologised if he'd done any damage to my dad's car. They shook hands and went on their way.
The closest my dad ever got to driving a police car was after we'd had a long boozy dinner up at the Spite with Kath, Alan and Helen, when he was too drunk to realise the car alarm was still on (but not, it seems, too drunk to drive). Motoring home, the car lights started flashing and the alarm blaring at full volume, in a satisfying imitation of a police panda car. Fortunately we did not attract the attention of any real officers, otherwise he might have got to ride in a police car for real.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
My Life As The Bowl
My first experience of the theatre came in 1979, aged 3, when I featured in the Rainbow Play Group's full-length adaptation of a series of nursey rhymes. I was cast as The Bowl, to Cathy McCoy's The Spoon, and it was my task to run away with her once The Cow had jumped over The Moon. I recall having been desperate to play The Moon, and so it was with bitter resentment that I portrayed some eloping crockery.
I didn't much know what to make of the show while we were rehearsing. Growing up in rural Yorkshire I'd had no cause to visit a theatre before, so the entire concept was alien to me: the stage, the curtains, a large room full of people including my parents. It was hard to imagine what it was all for, and yet still I played my role with panache and as the crowd roared I knew I'd found my calling.
It was some years later - at primary school - that I was next invited to act, in a somewhat confused adaptation of Winnie the Pooh which included a series of non-canon characters like Snow White. I was (along with the rest of the school) desperate to play Tigger, and I recall the night before the cast was announced standing naked in front of my father during bathtime and demonstrating that I was born to the role of Tigger by jumping up and drown frenetically until he pleaded with me to stop. My only anxiety was that the part came with a skin-tight costume, including orange tights decorated with black marker, and I wasn't certain I had the legs for it.
Alas, I was eventually cast as one of the Seven Dwarves and thus relegated to a stupid costume with a bobble hat, with my only job being to stomp around bellowing 'Hi-Ho!' while all of the other characters had fun. My one time friend Nicholas Cheetam was selected to play Tigger, a role he portrayed poorly, and his betrayal drove a wedge between us. We were never friends again .
Come Middle School (aged 10), I was selected to play the much-overlooked role of 'Newspaper Delivery Boy' in an all new adaptation of the Bible's Christ Story. Mrs Rees, the director, otherwise took authenticity seriously and insisted we all black-up with dark brown foundation so we'd look more middle eastern. My task was to hide at the back of the hall and then - halfway through the second scene - stride down the middle of the aisle bellowing "Read all about it! Read all about it! Census called in Bethlehem!" before handing newspapers out to the main characters on stage, thus seamlessly providing their motivation for Scene 3.
I don't recall much more about this production than that a tall blonde girl called Samantha was required to wear a miniskirt and gossip like a harlot, a task so suited to her that she adopted the role permanently in adulthood.
I became much more shy in my later years, and carefully avoided participating in any productions at secondary school. Pelinore Says and South Pacific thus passed me by, until in the sixth form (aged 17) Timothy Brabham and I were invited to write and direct the school pantomime. We'd never written a show before - indeed, had only written some pretty dreadful comedy sketches - so we had no real idea how to tackle the task. Things were not made easier by the furry-man-mountain that was Mr Dickinson, who handed us a vague concept which effectively comprised the weak play on words that is Sleepless Beauty, and we took it from there simply by dividing the scenes up and each writing completely different plots and characters for alternate scenes.
The plot and dialogue was extremely weak to start with, but then during rehearsals Mr Dickinson insisted on inserting his own scene towards the end in which he played a fat hairy priest quoting from the Bible ("Jacob answered his mother Rebekah, 'Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man and I am a smooth man."), which I vaguely suspect was a direct rip-off from Beyond the Fringe. The show was - ultimately - a great success, with one particularly heart-stopping scene in which the depressed jester was supposed to hang himself, and the teacher selected to play the role embraced it with such authenticity that he almost throttled himself to death with a rope hanging off the lighting rig. That got a terrific laugh.
I sat in the audience during the pantomime and had just one line to deliver during the entire performance, right at the end when Sleepless Beauty was due to marry her prince. The preist, shortly after some smooth-man/hairy-man bonus material, asked whether anyone in the audience had cause to object to the union. I was then required to bellow out, "I object. I object on the grounds that marriage is an outdated institution governed on lines which are both paternalistic and misogynistic!" (this was, you can see, comedy gold). Well, I was utterly terrified of doing any such thing, and sitting in the audience I didn't have the benefit of the adulation and adrenaline that fuelled the other performers. I thus found courage in a bottle of 'Rescue Remedy' which my mother had given me, which I sipped quietly through earlier scenes. Rescure Remedy claims to be a herbal solution to anxiety but really - in the quantities I consumed - offered its main support in the form of 70% proof industrial alcohol.
Later, while studying in Cambridge (aged 18), I entertained ideas of joining a comedy troupe such as Footlights, but the presence of such multi-skilled performers as David Mitchell and Robert Webb - combined with my own utter horror of performing - caused me to abandon this impulse. Finally, at the end of my first year, I spent a quiet weekend indoors writing a comedy play which was called, on the basis of three words chosen at random from the dictionary, Hooligan's Cows Dream.
I was quite pleased with the script, and in the second year Timothy Brabham and I formed the theatrical society JESSICA (Jolly Entertaining Show Staged In Cambridge Auditoria) in order to attract sufficient funding to put the show on at the Cambridge Play Room. This was a terrific decision as it was ultimately through this show that I made most of the university friends I now think most fondly of, most notably Olivia (who played Bob), Ted (Art Producer) and Darien (Director).
The plot concerned two people waiting in purgatory to hear whether they could enter Heaven, but who didn't realise they had already been judged and that their waiting was in fact Hell (the plot came to me while watching Satre's Huis Clos, which we sensibly flagged up in the programme in an attempt to wrong-foot the critics). It was a comedy of course, so Darien came up with the rather natty tagline of "A comedy about pain, suffering and death." He also shortened the title to Hooligan's Dream, and removed the worse excesses from the dialogue.
The show was a total hit, with most nights sold out and a substantial profit made. I was too self-conscious to watch the performance myself so I lurked in the cellar below the theatre like the Phantom of the Opera, listening to the audience laugh and clap and trying to guess which bits were so popular. When the first show concluded with cheering and applause I was so thrilled by the success that I ran out into the street whooping and raced all the way up to the Senate House, where a homeless man asked me for change and I was on such a high I gave him a full pound sterling. My mood soon fell on the Friday however when - on the way to a lecture - I picked up a copy of Varsity to read our reviews. The entire review was a direct and personal attack on me, which I considered rather unfair.
We only did one more show at Cambridge. Darien cobbled together some sketches he and some school pals had written, and we served the package as Twelve Moths (the name was chosen only after Ted had painted a poster of twelve moths). We persuaded Matt Benares to fund the entire venture on the basis of guaranteed return of 15% over one month. Of course, the show was an utter box office disaster and we lost it all.
"We didn't mean that sort of guaranteed return," we had to explain to Matt when he asked for his money. He was such a penny-pincher.
I didn't much know what to make of the show while we were rehearsing. Growing up in rural Yorkshire I'd had no cause to visit a theatre before, so the entire concept was alien to me: the stage, the curtains, a large room full of people including my parents. It was hard to imagine what it was all for, and yet still I played my role with panache and as the crowd roared I knew I'd found my calling.
It was some years later - at primary school - that I was next invited to act, in a somewhat confused adaptation of Winnie the Pooh which included a series of non-canon characters like Snow White. I was (along with the rest of the school) desperate to play Tigger, and I recall the night before the cast was announced standing naked in front of my father during bathtime and demonstrating that I was born to the role of Tigger by jumping up and drown frenetically until he pleaded with me to stop. My only anxiety was that the part came with a skin-tight costume, including orange tights decorated with black marker, and I wasn't certain I had the legs for it.
Alas, I was eventually cast as one of the Seven Dwarves and thus relegated to a stupid costume with a bobble hat, with my only job being to stomp around bellowing 'Hi-Ho!' while all of the other characters had fun. My one time friend Nicholas Cheetam was selected to play Tigger, a role he portrayed poorly, and his betrayal drove a wedge between us. We were never friends again .
Come Middle School (aged 10), I was selected to play the much-overlooked role of 'Newspaper Delivery Boy' in an all new adaptation of the Bible's Christ Story. Mrs Rees, the director, otherwise took authenticity seriously and insisted we all black-up with dark brown foundation so we'd look more middle eastern. My task was to hide at the back of the hall and then - halfway through the second scene - stride down the middle of the aisle bellowing "Read all about it! Read all about it! Census called in Bethlehem!" before handing newspapers out to the main characters on stage, thus seamlessly providing their motivation for Scene 3.
I don't recall much more about this production than that a tall blonde girl called Samantha was required to wear a miniskirt and gossip like a harlot, a task so suited to her that she adopted the role permanently in adulthood.
I became much more shy in my later years, and carefully avoided participating in any productions at secondary school. Pelinore Says and South Pacific thus passed me by, until in the sixth form (aged 17) Timothy Brabham and I were invited to write and direct the school pantomime. We'd never written a show before - indeed, had only written some pretty dreadful comedy sketches - so we had no real idea how to tackle the task. Things were not made easier by the furry-man-mountain that was Mr Dickinson, who handed us a vague concept which effectively comprised the weak play on words that is Sleepless Beauty, and we took it from there simply by dividing the scenes up and each writing completely different plots and characters for alternate scenes.
The plot and dialogue was extremely weak to start with, but then during rehearsals Mr Dickinson insisted on inserting his own scene towards the end in which he played a fat hairy priest quoting from the Bible ("Jacob answered his mother Rebekah, 'Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man and I am a smooth man."), which I vaguely suspect was a direct rip-off from Beyond the Fringe. The show was - ultimately - a great success, with one particularly heart-stopping scene in which the depressed jester was supposed to hang himself, and the teacher selected to play the role embraced it with such authenticity that he almost throttled himself to death with a rope hanging off the lighting rig. That got a terrific laugh.
I sat in the audience during the pantomime and had just one line to deliver during the entire performance, right at the end when Sleepless Beauty was due to marry her prince. The preist, shortly after some smooth-man/hairy-man bonus material, asked whether anyone in the audience had cause to object to the union. I was then required to bellow out, "I object. I object on the grounds that marriage is an outdated institution governed on lines which are both paternalistic and misogynistic!" (this was, you can see, comedy gold). Well, I was utterly terrified of doing any such thing, and sitting in the audience I didn't have the benefit of the adulation and adrenaline that fuelled the other performers. I thus found courage in a bottle of 'Rescue Remedy' which my mother had given me, which I sipped quietly through earlier scenes. Rescure Remedy claims to be a herbal solution to anxiety but really - in the quantities I consumed - offered its main support in the form of 70% proof industrial alcohol.
Later, while studying in Cambridge (aged 18), I entertained ideas of joining a comedy troupe such as Footlights, but the presence of such multi-skilled performers as David Mitchell and Robert Webb - combined with my own utter horror of performing - caused me to abandon this impulse. Finally, at the end of my first year, I spent a quiet weekend indoors writing a comedy play which was called, on the basis of three words chosen at random from the dictionary, Hooligan's Cows Dream.
I was quite pleased with the script, and in the second year Timothy Brabham and I formed the theatrical society JESSICA (Jolly Entertaining Show Staged In Cambridge Auditoria) in order to attract sufficient funding to put the show on at the Cambridge Play Room. This was a terrific decision as it was ultimately through this show that I made most of the university friends I now think most fondly of, most notably Olivia (who played Bob), Ted (Art Producer) and Darien (Director).
The plot concerned two people waiting in purgatory to hear whether they could enter Heaven, but who didn't realise they had already been judged and that their waiting was in fact Hell (the plot came to me while watching Satre's Huis Clos, which we sensibly flagged up in the programme in an attempt to wrong-foot the critics). It was a comedy of course, so Darien came up with the rather natty tagline of "A comedy about pain, suffering and death." He also shortened the title to Hooligan's Dream, and removed the worse excesses from the dialogue.
The show was a total hit, with most nights sold out and a substantial profit made. I was too self-conscious to watch the performance myself so I lurked in the cellar below the theatre like the Phantom of the Opera, listening to the audience laugh and clap and trying to guess which bits were so popular. When the first show concluded with cheering and applause I was so thrilled by the success that I ran out into the street whooping and raced all the way up to the Senate House, where a homeless man asked me for change and I was on such a high I gave him a full pound sterling. My mood soon fell on the Friday however when - on the way to a lecture - I picked up a copy of Varsity to read our reviews. The entire review was a direct and personal attack on me, which I considered rather unfair.
We only did one more show at Cambridge. Darien cobbled together some sketches he and some school pals had written, and we served the package as Twelve Moths (the name was chosen only after Ted had painted a poster of twelve moths). We persuaded Matt Benares to fund the entire venture on the basis of guaranteed return of 15% over one month. Of course, the show was an utter box office disaster and we lost it all.
"We didn't mean that sort of guaranteed return," we had to explain to Matt when he asked for his money. He was such a penny-pincher.
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher
I loved sucking my thumb as a toddler, and had a fabulous yellow wool comfort blanket with satin trim which I would push under my nose while I sucked. To this day I still have an indentation permanently embossed into my skin where the thumb rested on my incisor. I suppose my parents realised this was going too far when I started waving goodbye to my friends with four fingers while the thumb remained resolutely in my mouth. It was clearly time to wean me off the thumb.
My mum first decided to get rid of my blanket, and took the short-sharp-shock approach: I was simply told I was too old for it now and it had been thrown away. I was utterly devastated and declared myself unable to sleep at night without it. Since no blanket was returned to me I was forced to take matters into my own hands, and I waited until my mum's back was turned and crept into the kitchen drawer to steal some scissors, retiring to my bedroom and cut a blankie-sized piece of terry towelling out of the undersheet on my bed.
I'm not sure how I thought my crime would go undetected. I suppose my infant mind imagined that the beds made themselves and that my mother never had call to go near them. Anyway, the destruction was quickly discovered and I was severely punished. As this was the 1970s, when one didn't go throwing things out simply because they'd been slashed by an infant with scissors, my mum sewed my new blankie back into the undersheet and there it remained until way into my late teens, an uncomfortable ridge under my heel when the 16-year-old me was trying to sleep.
Once I had finally grown used to the absence of the blanket, my mum exposed me to the horror that is Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher, the terrible tale from Shockheaded Peter in which a young boy is told not to suck his thumb while his mother goes to the shops. I recall identifying with the boy in the story very well, and even feeling slightly cheered to see him finally submitting to his addiction and sucking his thumb, so it struck me with an extraordinary level of horror when a skinny old man with a giant pair of scissors broke into the house and snipped off both thumbs as a punishment (for some reason, my brain believes this story was told on Rainbow, but that seems unlikely).
I went to bed that night utterly horrified, convinced against all reason that a man would break into my room and cut my thumbs off with scissors. My dad came back from work late that evening and went to kiss me goodnight, surprised to find me still awake, and I pleaded with him to leave the lights on in case the scissor man came in and tried to amputate my thumbs.
I remeber quite clearly the confused look on his face, and my mum's shrug as she stood at the bedroom door trying not to look sheepish. I don't think I heard any more Shockheaded Peter stories after that.
[Time: 1980]
My mum first decided to get rid of my blanket, and took the short-sharp-shock approach: I was simply told I was too old for it now and it had been thrown away. I was utterly devastated and declared myself unable to sleep at night without it. Since no blanket was returned to me I was forced to take matters into my own hands, and I waited until my mum's back was turned and crept into the kitchen drawer to steal some scissors, retiring to my bedroom and cut a blankie-sized piece of terry towelling out of the undersheet on my bed.
I'm not sure how I thought my crime would go undetected. I suppose my infant mind imagined that the beds made themselves and that my mother never had call to go near them. Anyway, the destruction was quickly discovered and I was severely punished. As this was the 1970s, when one didn't go throwing things out simply because they'd been slashed by an infant with scissors, my mum sewed my new blankie back into the undersheet and there it remained until way into my late teens, an uncomfortable ridge under my heel when the 16-year-old me was trying to sleep.
Once I had finally grown used to the absence of the blanket, my mum exposed me to the horror that is Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher, the terrible tale from Shockheaded Peter in which a young boy is told not to suck his thumb while his mother goes to the shops. I recall identifying with the boy in the story very well, and even feeling slightly cheered to see him finally submitting to his addiction and sucking his thumb, so it struck me with an extraordinary level of horror when a skinny old man with a giant pair of scissors broke into the house and snipped off both thumbs as a punishment (for some reason, my brain believes this story was told on Rainbow, but that seems unlikely).
I went to bed that night utterly horrified, convinced against all reason that a man would break into my room and cut my thumbs off with scissors. My dad came back from work late that evening and went to kiss me goodnight, surprised to find me still awake, and I pleaded with him to leave the lights on in case the scissor man came in and tried to amputate my thumbs.
I remeber quite clearly the confused look on his face, and my mum's shrug as she stood at the bedroom door trying not to look sheepish. I don't think I heard any more Shockheaded Peter stories after that.
[Time: 1980]
PEOPLE: Stuart Colefaks
In the third year of Middle School, when I would be around 10, a school trip to Wales was announced. Our math teacher Mr Nicholson was to work out the sleeping arrangements and asked us to write down the name of the person we most wanted to share with, and the name of the person we least wanted to share with. An optimal solution could thus be calculated.
It took me no time at all to work out who to put as my friend, Alistair Howtown. It was also no trouble working out who I least wanted to share with: the poisonous dwarf Stuart Colefaks. I had known Stuart since primary school and he had always been a vile and filthy creature (for those unacquainted with him, you need only think of Golem from the Peter Jackson movies). He also had a huge patch of scabby baldness on one side of his head, where some horrible accident had burned off his hair - the unpleasant, violent and essentially stupid nature of his personality meant this was not a cause hatred, not pity.
Anyway, long story short Mr Nicholson got the names on my piece of paper muddled up, and so while Alistair Howtown and everyone else got to sleep in dorms with their friends, I was the only one out of sixty kids who appeared to have put Stuart at the top of my list and so we ended sharing a set of bunk beds in a tiny room together. I still wonder to this day if Mr Nicholson was being purposefully vindictive.
A cautious friendship was formed with Stuart during those four days, in which I learned to almost trust him. It seemed Stuart put on a facade of obnoxiousness in order to disguise his insecurities, and once he realised I wouldn't judge him for that he began to act more like a human. Things were going really well until one night when he wet the bed, a fact which Mr Nicholson swore me to secrecy and which I have faithfully kept a secret until this very day (to be fair, Mr Nicholson said "Don't tell your friends", not "Don't publish this in your blog in 23 years time").
For some reason, Stuart was convinced I would betray him and entertain my friends with tales of his noctural emissions (nothing was further from my mind. It wasn't entertaining, it was disgusting. I'd been in the bunk below). Stuart decided the best way to deflect the entirely absent accusations against him was by launching allegations against me, claiming I had wet my bed. This was an extraordinary way to behave and only drew attention to the truth, and I told him in no uncertain terms that if he kept talking like that I'd tell everyone he'd pissed on the mattress. This silenced him for the remainder of the holiday.
Back at school, we had an uneasy acquaintance and I don't recall much of significance passing between us. I have a vague memory of playing a game with him in sewing class, where there was a huge set of tiny drawers each with a different type of thread in them. The game he came up with was to select two drawers at random and see if the colours matched. Given the drawers existed solely to separate the different colours out I could see this was a futile game, but he was an extraordinarily stupid child who was regularly driven to violence and so it was just pleasing to find something peaceful to occupy him.
One day we had to bring in photographs of ourselves when we were younger for some sort of memory project. I had a typical photo of an apple-cheeked child happy at play, and was naturally fascinated to see what sort of beastly infant Stuart had mutated out of. To my great surprise the photo he presented was of Stuart with clean blond hair and an undamaged scalp, engaged in a scene of beatific joy building a sandcastle on the beach. I looked at the collection of urine-soaked bones holding out this photo for my inspection and saw for the first time that he had trouble at home: Stuart was not this way because this is what he chose to be, but because this was the best he could manage in horrible circumstances. The photo was the last remnant of a happier childhood he could only vaguely remember.
I expressed my suspicions to my mum, who had worked as a dinner lady at the primary school while we were there and had gathered enough gossip to fill three Memory Projects. She told Stuart's background as the story of a happy family torn apart by child abuse, violence, extreme poverty and all-pervading neglect. He was the Baby P of his generation. He was a bed wetter for a reason.
If I felt a pang of pity for Stuart then, this quickly evaporated in secondary school where he formed a gang with a number of other miscreants and set about abusing everyone and everything. He even tried bullying me, something I tended to ignore as I was a quiet teen, but I recall eventually snapping. One day outside the science block I was so pissed off with his petty slander that I grabbed him by the shoulders and bellowed a stream of abuse at him. I was five feet ten with a solid build, and he was the same tiny, dirty little shit he had always been. He ran away and never bothered me again.
Ultimately, while I was at university, Stuart was jailed for his involvement in drugs, and in around 2001 a rumour started circulating that he had killed himself in prison. The people I discussed this with seemed almost pleased that such a poisonous creature had removed itself from the world, but alas it turned out to be nothing more than a rumour.
That said, if you run his (non-obfuscated) name through the internet, there is no record of his existence.
It took me no time at all to work out who to put as my friend, Alistair Howtown. It was also no trouble working out who I least wanted to share with: the poisonous dwarf Stuart Colefaks. I had known Stuart since primary school and he had always been a vile and filthy creature (for those unacquainted with him, you need only think of Golem from the Peter Jackson movies). He also had a huge patch of scabby baldness on one side of his head, where some horrible accident had burned off his hair - the unpleasant, violent and essentially stupid nature of his personality meant this was not a cause hatred, not pity.
Anyway, long story short Mr Nicholson got the names on my piece of paper muddled up, and so while Alistair Howtown and everyone else got to sleep in dorms with their friends, I was the only one out of sixty kids who appeared to have put Stuart at the top of my list and so we ended sharing a set of bunk beds in a tiny room together. I still wonder to this day if Mr Nicholson was being purposefully vindictive.
A cautious friendship was formed with Stuart during those four days, in which I learned to almost trust him. It seemed Stuart put on a facade of obnoxiousness in order to disguise his insecurities, and once he realised I wouldn't judge him for that he began to act more like a human. Things were going really well until one night when he wet the bed, a fact which Mr Nicholson swore me to secrecy and which I have faithfully kept a secret until this very day (to be fair, Mr Nicholson said "Don't tell your friends", not "Don't publish this in your blog in 23 years time").
For some reason, Stuart was convinced I would betray him and entertain my friends with tales of his noctural emissions (nothing was further from my mind. It wasn't entertaining, it was disgusting. I'd been in the bunk below). Stuart decided the best way to deflect the entirely absent accusations against him was by launching allegations against me, claiming I had wet my bed. This was an extraordinary way to behave and only drew attention to the truth, and I told him in no uncertain terms that if he kept talking like that I'd tell everyone he'd pissed on the mattress. This silenced him for the remainder of the holiday.
Back at school, we had an uneasy acquaintance and I don't recall much of significance passing between us. I have a vague memory of playing a game with him in sewing class, where there was a huge set of tiny drawers each with a different type of thread in them. The game he came up with was to select two drawers at random and see if the colours matched. Given the drawers existed solely to separate the different colours out I could see this was a futile game, but he was an extraordinarily stupid child who was regularly driven to violence and so it was just pleasing to find something peaceful to occupy him.
One day we had to bring in photographs of ourselves when we were younger for some sort of memory project. I had a typical photo of an apple-cheeked child happy at play, and was naturally fascinated to see what sort of beastly infant Stuart had mutated out of. To my great surprise the photo he presented was of Stuart with clean blond hair and an undamaged scalp, engaged in a scene of beatific joy building a sandcastle on the beach. I looked at the collection of urine-soaked bones holding out this photo for my inspection and saw for the first time that he had trouble at home: Stuart was not this way because this is what he chose to be, but because this was the best he could manage in horrible circumstances. The photo was the last remnant of a happier childhood he could only vaguely remember.
I expressed my suspicions to my mum, who had worked as a dinner lady at the primary school while we were there and had gathered enough gossip to fill three Memory Projects. She told Stuart's background as the story of a happy family torn apart by child abuse, violence, extreme poverty and all-pervading neglect. He was the Baby P of his generation. He was a bed wetter for a reason.
If I felt a pang of pity for Stuart then, this quickly evaporated in secondary school where he formed a gang with a number of other miscreants and set about abusing everyone and everything. He even tried bullying me, something I tended to ignore as I was a quiet teen, but I recall eventually snapping. One day outside the science block I was so pissed off with his petty slander that I grabbed him by the shoulders and bellowed a stream of abuse at him. I was five feet ten with a solid build, and he was the same tiny, dirty little shit he had always been. He ran away and never bothered me again.
Ultimately, while I was at university, Stuart was jailed for his involvement in drugs, and in around 2001 a rumour started circulating that he had killed himself in prison. The people I discussed this with seemed almost pleased that such a poisonous creature had removed itself from the world, but alas it turned out to be nothing more than a rumour.
That said, if you run his (non-obfuscated) name through the internet, there is no record of his existence.
Monday, 28 September 2009
A Case of Honest Theft
Eating in a restaurant in Dublin at the weekend, I was delighted to be served After Eight mints. I remembered fondly how sophisticated these chocolates seemed when I was a child.
So expensive and exclusive was the After Eight that most middle class families always seemed to have a half-empty box squirreled away in the sideboard somewhere, alongside the china and cutlery which were also reserved for special occasions. The box would come out only when honoured guests were visiting, and each diner would consume a single mint before the box was retired to the sideboard for the season. In those days a box would never - as now - be devoured in its entirety, the table deluged in a pile of spent paper wrappers.
I remember on one occasion we were visiting my parents' friends Peter and Margaret in Abingdon, and my brother and I were left in the company of their children, Katherine and Steven. After the usual tiresome day of discovering that none of us liked the same ball games and that computers still sucked, the four of us got to chatting about pulling off an elaborate After Eight heist which - in our heads - was about as daring as the Thomas Crown Affair. We drew diagrams on paper and worked out elaborate ways of sneaking past our mothers in the kitchen - crouching behind the armchair, taking it in turns to run from hiding spot to hiding spot - so that we could break into the dining room and help ourselves to the treasure chest of delicious mints that waited inside.
It was clear to us that our subtefuge would not go unnoticed for long, and for each mint we ate we insured our risks by placing a single penny piece in the empty black envelope and returning it to the box, in part payment for what we had consumed.
The weeks passed and the theft was only discovered the next time we were visiting, months later, when we children were awoken from our slumber upstairs by the roaring laughter of our drunken parents. We had, of course, wholly forgotten about the prank.
I recall on another occasion - when Margaret and Peter were visiting us - that Steven told me that tonic water tasted just like lemonade, and he encouraged me to steal some from the pantry. An impressionable wee dolt, I duly trotted into the kitchen, opened up the bottle and started pouring it directly into my mouth. I was not quite prepared for how effervescent tonic water can be, and the fluid erupted like a minature Vesuvious in my mouth and out in all directions across the kitchen.
The theft was on this occasion difficult to disguise, as my mum came racing into the room upon hearing the sound of her son's head being blown off, and found me standing drenched in the middle of the kitchen, an empty bottle in one hand and a dozen g&ts worth of tonic soaking into the carpet.
[Time: around 1986]
So expensive and exclusive was the After Eight that most middle class families always seemed to have a half-empty box squirreled away in the sideboard somewhere, alongside the china and cutlery which were also reserved for special occasions. The box would come out only when honoured guests were visiting, and each diner would consume a single mint before the box was retired to the sideboard for the season. In those days a box would never - as now - be devoured in its entirety, the table deluged in a pile of spent paper wrappers.
I remember on one occasion we were visiting my parents' friends Peter and Margaret in Abingdon, and my brother and I were left in the company of their children, Katherine and Steven. After the usual tiresome day of discovering that none of us liked the same ball games and that computers still sucked, the four of us got to chatting about pulling off an elaborate After Eight heist which - in our heads - was about as daring as the Thomas Crown Affair. We drew diagrams on paper and worked out elaborate ways of sneaking past our mothers in the kitchen - crouching behind the armchair, taking it in turns to run from hiding spot to hiding spot - so that we could break into the dining room and help ourselves to the treasure chest of delicious mints that waited inside.
It was clear to us that our subtefuge would not go unnoticed for long, and for each mint we ate we insured our risks by placing a single penny piece in the empty black envelope and returning it to the box, in part payment for what we had consumed.
The weeks passed and the theft was only discovered the next time we were visiting, months later, when we children were awoken from our slumber upstairs by the roaring laughter of our drunken parents. We had, of course, wholly forgotten about the prank.
I recall on another occasion - when Margaret and Peter were visiting us - that Steven told me that tonic water tasted just like lemonade, and he encouraged me to steal some from the pantry. An impressionable wee dolt, I duly trotted into the kitchen, opened up the bottle and started pouring it directly into my mouth. I was not quite prepared for how effervescent tonic water can be, and the fluid erupted like a minature Vesuvious in my mouth and out in all directions across the kitchen.
The theft was on this occasion difficult to disguise, as my mum came racing into the room upon hearing the sound of her son's head being blown off, and found me standing drenched in the middle of the kitchen, an empty bottle in one hand and a dozen g&ts worth of tonic soaking into the carpet.
[Time: around 1986]
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