Musings on my life

I was a charmingly pudgy baby. To the point where I got stuck in my rubber swimming ring and it had to be deflated around me while my parents encouraged me to breathe in. An extraordinary sensation which I have been trying to recreate for years using an assortment of devices. I had an affinity for water at that age. There is a picture of myself and my sister in the back garden, naked as the babes we were. My sister is holding the garden hose to my mouth and my stomach is visibly swelling with the pressure. This is a sensation I experience regularly at the pub. I’n’t beer great?

When I was four we lived in the Bahamas and my mother asked me which ten of my friends I’d like to invite to my birthday party. I gave her a list which she took to my kindergarten teacher. The teacher chuckled when she saw it and told my mother she’s be in for a long day. I’d invited ten of the naughtiest black boys in the school. They all turned up on the appointed day in their velvet suits with white ruffled shirts, bow ties and patent leather shoes and my mother breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps they weren’t as naughty as she’d been led to believe. I’m told that within 30 minutes we were, all eleven of us, to be found naked up a tree in the avocado orchard behind the house. And so it began…

At the age of nine I was world-weary and jaded. I decided to write my autobiography. It began, rather excitingly, with my birth in a fire-lit long-house in Brunei. The smoky shadows throwing bizarre shapes onto the wooden walls and my father sipping coffee in a far corner muttering, ‘Fascinating’ every so often as my mother pushed me out into the soft brown waiting hands of half a dozen midwives. My biography continued with the brag that the Sultan of Brunei (yes, THE Sultan of Brunei) held me in his arms and told my mother that I was adorable. I then added a chapter (chapters aren’t very long when you’re nine) about being consumed by a crocodile and being miraculously spit out due to my slugs-‘n’-snails-‘n’-puppy-dogs-tails flavour. I was a tom-boy.

As a tom boy in an all girls boarding school I was by no means alone. I competed memorably with ‘Tom’ (the most popular girl in my year) and ‘Bow-Wow’ who was happier being a dog, amongst others less imaginative. I refused to adopt a boy’s name as mine was sufficiently (and pleasingly) androgynous but I did everything I could think of to be more boy-like. I skinned my knees climbing trees and buildings, accepted every double-dare anyone could think of, treated my conkers until they were tungsten-like and once punched a girl for suggesting I wear a skirt when out of uniform. I had a Thor tee-shirt and a fantastic pair of camoflage trousers (before they became trendy). Sadly these very clothes became history when I was run over, aged 8. My best friend Kim (another androgynous name) and I had been allowed to cross the road unsupervised for the first time in order to play in the adventure playground. My mother became concerned when we hadn’t returned on time and came to find us. As she was crossing the road some policemen were measuring it. She asked what had happened and breathed a huge (if guilty) sigh of relief when she was told that two little boys had been run over. It only took a few seconds to twig, though and she asked for a description of these ‘boys’.

I have a rubber head and bounced happily off the windscreen of the lotus and landed with a bit of a thunk on the pavement with nothing a few stitches and some linament wouldn’t solve. Unhappily my friend Kim had more serious injuries, of which I was seriously jealous. I remember lying on the emergency room table as they cut my clothes off me screaming as loudly as I could. I wasn’t in pain, particularly, but I REALLY didn’t want them to cut my clothes off me. My poor mother, waiting outside the door, was picturing horrible tortures being inflicted on me. I had a lovely time in hospital, accepting as my due the gifts and chocolate that was lavished on me. In those days they used to keep you in hospital for ages and I was in for 8 weeks before my family bribed me with a HOLIDAY in France and I graciously agreed to allow myself to be discharged. Life hasn’t really been the same since.