Category
Childhood
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01.01.03On CrushesHow did that song go after that anyway? Something about how I could grind coffee every time we touch? I could never figure it out.In 1985, I went to the Just Seventeen magazine open day at the editorial offices on Carnaby Street, with my best friend Jane. We were eleven at the time - though as anyone who's familiar with teen girl publications (that's for, not about) will confirm, the average age of readers is generally about five years lower than you pretend it is. So Just Seventeen (known as J17 these days) should really be called Just Twelve, while ...
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01.01.03On Prolonging PleasureI think I've got the wrong attitude about going to the gym. I mean, I enjoy it, and I make an effort to go regularly, and I do feel like it's worthwhile, but there's a fundamental problem with the way I think about it.See, most of my gym-going friends say things like:"Oh no, I shouldn't have a biscuit because I've done all that work at the gym"...meaning that it'll undo all their hard work. I, on the other hand, find myself saying things like:"I can have a biscuit because I've done all that hard work at the gym"They're goal-based - ...
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01.01.03Home AbstractMore images...When I was a kid, in bed and unable to sleep at night, I would look up at the ceiling and imagine what it would be like if the world was turned on its head, studying the shape of the room from the perspective of the empty expanse of the ceiling. If I lived on the ceiling, how would I get through the door? I'd need to clamber up to the doorway, suspended a couple of feet from the floor (ceiling) surface. The windows would be low the walls. The lightswitch high up. I'd need to avoid the light ...
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01.01.03On Public ArtIn the great, grim, glorious days of the GLC in eighties london, the South Bank frequently played host to great works of public art, towering over the murky thames, often contrasting starkly with the grey paved and concrete-clad terraces which surround the National Theatre, SBC and Royal Festival Hall. When conceived the terraces were supposed to be public spaces - for meeting and mingling, seeing and being seen, much like the great piazzas of Italy, and grand moorish plazas of Southern Spain. Unfortunately, London on a wet Saturday afternoon could not be further from these distant, sunny ideals, and the terraces ...
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01.01.03The Writing On The WallI've pretty much never been one to be influenced by nefarious friends. On the whole, I've been fairly good at making decisions for myself, not bowing to peer pressure, even if it made me unpopular. I like to think that I've been consistently true to my conscience. That is, since I was about twelve. Before then, I was as malleable as blu-tack that's been sitting on top of a radiator for days. Picture the scene. It's the mid eighties in Thatcher's Britain. It's the first month of the first year of secondary school, I'm eleven, and I've got a bad pageboy ...
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01.01.03The Wedding Guest (2)This weekend, my mum (who, coincidentally would be both horrified and overjoyed in equal measures if I were to get married this side of 30) reminded me why I am a terrible wedding guest. No, nothing to do with flirting with the best man - though i have excelled at that in the past - my problem, according to my dear mother, is a tendancy towards kleptomania. In classic motherly style, my mum has a dreadful habit of picking one isolated incident from my childhood and instantly rendering it characteristic of my entire behaviour. Forever. Hence following an unfortunate run-in with a ...
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01.01.03On Voting, and Political PartiesIt was really hot that week. I remember the weather with the kind of clarity that comes with being a final year student living in a flat overlooking a park, watching people play frisbee, drink lager and loll about in the sunshine while I studied for my finals and wished plagues of pollen and midges upon them. Bastards. It was the second election I'd voted in, but the first I'd paid much attention to. In 1992, I'd been living in the Tory-for-ever-and-ever constituency of Kensington and Chelsea. I sent in my vote in a tatty envelope from Mexico - taking part ...
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01.01.03On TeachersThe best teacher I ever had, since you ask, was not one of the obvious ones. I had some cracking teachers in college and university - Sylla (Spanish), Theo (English), Rosie (Sociolinguistics and Quechua) - in their own ways, each of them inspired me to learn, extending the student-teacher relationship into friendship (whether that meant eating chocolate fondue at their flat or lending favourite books and urging me to read them) and I have to thank them. But the best teacher I ever had was not my favourite. She was a woman called Ms Stacke and she was not an ...
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01.01.03The Sinky SagaAs a Christmas present from my grandparents in 1979, the three of us (big brother, me and little sister) each got given a boat to float on the local boating pond (a two foot deep, 12'x12' concrete hollow) on the top of a hill overlooking Port Erin and Port St Mary, near their home on the Isle of Man.There was nothing especially fancy about these boats. They were not remote controlled or swanky. They were powered by being tugged along on a piece of string, puffed by the occasional gust of wind and (if the towline was dropped) often retrieved ...
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12.16.02On School UniformsSo one night we were sitting in a pub in Hammersmith, having a quiet(ish) drink, when all of a sudden the pub was invaded by hoardes of school-children. How odd.Closer inspection revealed that the pub had actually been taken over by twenty-somethings dressed up as teenagers in school uniform, heading off to School Disco at Po Na Na (formerly the Palais) just down the road.The school uniforms worn by the bacardi-breeze drinking throng were completely unlike anything I remember seeing at school: No dark blue 4-box-pleat serge skirts coming to just below the knee (scientifically proven to be the most ...
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