Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 August 2008 21:07:14
So, a few months before my fifth birthday, I started school. I was always a pretty bright kid - ahead of the average for my age in reading, writing and maths - and soon settled in well. The school was in our village, and before too long I had a little routine up and running. I walked to school in the morning, often calling in on the way at Nanna and Grandad P's house (they'd now moved to the village, which was just as well, because calling via Northampton on the way would have added over 100 miles to my walk) where Grandad would comb my hair so I looked smart, and then I'd mess it up again as soon as I was out of the back gate. Mum was now working part time, so after school I'd go to Nanna K's house and be plied with chocolate and crisps (and, later in my childhood, money which I mostly spent on more chocolate and crisps) until she got home.
And the stuff in between? Well, despite my apparent intelligence, I never really became an A grade student. A lot of the time I just couldn't be bothered, and coasted a bit, relying on the fact that I was fairly bright and could blag my way a little. That's not to say that I didn't have a few blond moments though (actually, I was quite blond in my early years, but my hair turned brown around the age of five or six and has stayed that way ever since - but I digress...). One famous moment came when an author visited the school to read us parts of his new book and then sign copies of it, leading to this exchange:
Him: (pen in hand, ready to sign book) "And what's your name?"
Me: "Steven."
Him: "Is that with a 'V' or with a 'PH'?"
Me: (unaware there is more than one spelling of Steven and assuming he's just totally thick) "No, it's with an 'S'..."
Ah yes, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra: "Embarassing childhood moments, I've had a few; but then again, too few to mention". In no particular order, various stories of my formative years:
- playing a game in the back garden with Tina, in which we've turned our parents' coffe table upside down and are using it as a boat (I still can't believe they actually let us do that). Tina turns to me and says, "Oh no, we're sinking. Fetch the oars!" Having no idea what oars are, I promptly walk off into the house and return two minutes later with... the horse from Tina's Sindy doll set. He wasn't much help in getting us back to dry land.
- the day Mum broke her leg while walking to the postbox round the corner from our house. Thankfully a family friend (a lorry driver making one of his occasional mid-route "mystery" detours via our house for a cup of tea) arrived and phoned for an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, I tried to think of something nice to do for Mum and, figuring she might get bored while she was waiting at the hospital, decided to find a book for her to read. So my poor mother, already suffering from a broken leg, was carted off to hospital incongruously clutching a Rupert the Bear annual, which I suspect didn't take her mind off things as much as I had expected.
- a pre-five-years-old story, I think, but still quite a fun one. Me, Mum and Tina were at church one Sunday morning (Dad was playing golf, usually), and the vicar announced we would spend a few moments saying sorry to God for the things we'd done wrong. At which point I piped up, "well, I haven't done anything wrong", much to my mother's embarrassment. Thankfully, the vicar saw the funny side and amended his words: "OK, all but one of us are going to say sorry..."
- as we were a caravaning family, there are a couple of great stories from there too, such as the time around the age of three when I thought I was Superman and jumped off the top bunk bed. Reader, you will be as surprised as I was to discover that I couldn't fly; a scar across the bridge of my nose acts as a constant reminder that it's less painful and more successful to use a plane if I want to fly from one place to another.
- a later childhood caravaning story comes from our usual family tradition of finding a nearby fish and chip shop for dinner once we'd arrived at our location. One night, my parents suggested I might want to try something different instead of my usual sausage and chips. So I looked at the menu and picked scampi, having no idea what it actually was. It went on to become one of my favourite meals (much to Mum and Dad's consternation, as it was somewhat more expensive than a sausage), but my delicate palate wasn't yet ready for it; in the early hours of the morning, I woke up, groaned a bit, and promptly threw up. Which was bad news for my sister, who was sleeping in the bunk below and got an unpleasant wake-up call, and also for Mum and Dad who had to clean it all up. Meanwhile I went back to sleep, seemingly oblivious to the chaos and unpleasantness I had caused - even when we drove past the chip shop the next day and I commented on what lovely fish and chips we'd had, while everyone else in the car maintained an irritated silence...
I could go on, but I can't actually remember any other great stories (none that I want to share with the worldwide web, anyway). The rest of my childhood is a bit of a blur of family holidays (normally to a hotel on the Isle of Wight, where I learned to swim and once entered a fancy dress contest as John MacEnroe), weekends away in the caravan (I never really took to caravaning as much as the rest of the family did; I didn't really want to spend my weekends away from my friends sitting in a box in the middle of a field in perpetual drizzle), and hanging out with my friends. I got on fairly well with everyone at school and didn't really have any enemies as such, but I did have a few close friends - James, Paul, the unfeasibly tall Eddie, and Michael and Tony, two "twins" who bore no resemblance whatsoever to each other except they had identical haircuts (Mum always suspected one or both of them had been adopted, and I suspect she may have been right). It was with James and the "twins" that I invented a genius game one break time - genius in the sense that only an eight-year-old can come up with. The rules were simple - player one gets on player two's shoulders, and player two throws player one onto the ground. This provided huge entertainment for us for a whole fifteen minutes, until the very moment the whistle blew for the end of break, which coincided with the very moment I smacked my shoulder into the ground and broke my collar bone. The following morning I turned up at school with my arm in a sling, and Mum spoke to Michael, who was somewhat terrified that he would be in serious trouble; thankfully, Mum understood that Boys Do Stupid Things and just told him that she didn't blame him, I was just as responsible, and we probably shouldn't play this game ever again, advice which we duly took.
All in all, then, a pretty average childhood, and quite a nice one at that. No doubt my sister will be along in due course to correct all the bits I got wrong. And then I'll be back to go through the secondary school years...