Thursday 16th November

Was I ever really that carefree child, running through the fields of Summer sunshine?  Yes.  That is one version of my childhood.  Idyllic.  We lived in Suffolk.  A quite large council house on a new development, a green space in front of the house and fields behind us.  A large loving family around too.  And many times I must have been a happy little boy.  But….we are complex creatures.  And my happiness has always been tempered by maybe too much self-consciousness.  For years I insisted that I had an unhappy childhood; this sort of justified my faults.  Questions about my parentage still clouded my mind.  And then I became the naughty boy.  And where he sprung from I do not know; it is pointless to blame anyone else -which of course, didn’t stop me from doing just that.  My parents and school became a sort of enemy, to be thwarted whenever I could.  And I also became a liar.  A habit I have struggled to lose even in adulthood.  Famously I peed over another boy – a misdemeanour I have been reminded of ad-infinitum.

Where this quiet rebellion came from I do not know.  I was living more and more of an internal life, having secrets seemed the best thing in the world – my world, mind you.  And yet…I still sought popularity, especially at school, where I morphed into the class clown, who dared to cheek the teachers.  I am sure that I thought I was far cleverer than all of them.

Somehow I passed the 11 plus, even if this was questioned by the Headmaster.  And at Grammar School I continued being the joker, and adopted a policy of doing as little work, especially homework, as possible without being expelled.  I was caned almost every week, but considered this a small price to pay for my secret independence.  I had a paper round and would nick a Times every day, and read it under my desk while the teacher droned on.  I was already Political at 13 or so.

And then Puberty hit…and that life, while not over, changed again.