Running backwards, forwards and sideways in time.
I’m not even sure where to start with this part of my story. How does the quote go? ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?’ Well, that depends on the circumstances around the loss, I think. Because frankly, some of the losses I’ve suffered I could have happily…
Birdsong heralded the start of a new day, gently ushering in the chilly, grey morning with a subtlety that was appreciated by all in the house. Gradually, eyelids fluttered open, fingers and toes stretched and alarm bells of the non-panic-filled variety coaxed the more resolute sleepers from their beds. The stillness of the night slowly…
Around 1992, while England were failing miserably at the Euros under Graham Taylor, Mother made the decision for all of us to move away from Horsham and relocate to move in with a man that she had been seeing for a while, Brian, who was a dead ringer for the guy from the ‘Courts’ advert…
My relationship with my mother has always been a complicated one. Fundamentally, I think that she is unable to see past me as a ‘male Hepburn’ and as such I am a constant reminder of my father and everything that he did to her. Unfair, maybe? But as I said before, to me in some…
It’s June 1990 and the torment of the whole GCSE ‘situation’ was coming to an end. Not only had I had to contend with my own shortcomings in the revision/retaining of information/examination processes, but some clown had also decided to schedule the beginning of the World Cup in the middle of the most important exams…
Whisper it quietly, but when I first discovered football, I became a Manchester United fan (I suspect to my father’s disappointment, he would have loved nothing more than for me to follow in his Sunderland-supporting footsteps). I have no idea why I followed the Red Devils and perhaps that’s part of the reason why, on…
Needless to say, at an all-boys school, opportunities to engage with girls were limited. At the time, the premises on which Devonport High School was situated were shared with a mixed school, Tamar High School, which was attended by a few of the students from Pennycross and, of course, the much-maligned apple of my eye,…
While my early days at DHS were a bit of a mixed bag in terms of discovering who I was and ultimately who I wanted to be, an unpleasant memory surfaced recently that I’m hesitant about sharing…but this is supposed to be a look back on all that I remember, warts and all, so to…
My first year at Devonport High School (where all first-year students were affectionately and more often than not less-than-affectionately known as ‘scruffs’) was arguably my most productive in terms of output and behaviour. I was keen to get on and experience what would be my first taste of prolonged stability in an educational establishment. I…
I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts before moving on to the next part of my story. Walking through my early years has left me feeling bruised as I have uncovered more memories than I expected and reliving the times when I was on the receiving end of violence or worse has saddled me with…
A Life More Ordinary