Category
Childhood
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12.08.02Dancing QueenNot so long ago, I agreed to meet up with four people I haven't seen since I was eleven. Let me say that again. Four people I knew in primary school. That's nearly two decades ago. I'm not entirely sure what is driving us to meet up, except perhaps morbid curiosity and a settling of old scores. T was a class bully, and the last time I saw him, on the last day of school, I released years of pent-up frustration at his name calling and cruelty by kicking him hard in the shin and calling him a stupid pig. ...
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12.08.02Cruel and UnusualMr Wood was a big man, although in retrospect he might not have actually been that big after all, because we were in fact very small. Our primary school was in the middle of North Kensington, surrounded on three sides by tall council blocks, in which most of the pupils lived. Mr Wood had a moustache, and reminded me of Basil Fawlty, though this was undoubtedly due to height and facial hair rather than humour and mannerisms. Mr Woods had an interesting and original line in punishments. More than once, I saw him pick kids up by their ears, or dangle ...
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12.08.02Cow GumIn the late seventies and early eighties, my mum was working as an editor for a national magazine. A couple of days before my seventh birthday, I must have either been on holiday or there might have been a strike at school - I don't remember which, but either way, one afternoon I went to visit her in the busy editorial office in the middle of London. [aside: this was at a time when it was considered completely fine for seven year old girls to catch the tube into central London on their own. Who knew?] So there I was, sitting ...
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12.08.02Wie sagt man “confused” en francais?In secondary school, I took both French and German. For five years, both classes were taught by the same teacher, and took place in the same classroom, straight after each other. This meant that twice a week I got very confused, having ninety minutes of German class, and then staying in the same seat and in the same room in front of the same teacher to have a further hour and a half of French lesson. The first twenty minutes of the second class were invariably a write-off. My adolescent brain simply couldn't shift gear that quickly.As years have passed, ...
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12.08.02On CarnivalThe sensation of a strangers' boner on your backside as you bump and wine' with the crowd behind a truck. Ick. Acute tinnitus and vibrating chest-cavity from standing too close to sound systems. Ow. Bewildered wonderment at the people who bring pushchairs and umbrellas to the event. Er, why? Amusement as one of your friends asks about toilets. Heh. Complete bemusement as you manage to individually bump into four people you haven't seen for at least a decade, in a crowd of a million. Odd. I'm a carnival kid. I can't help it. I grew up in Notting Hill in the seventies, when it ...
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12.08.02Carry On ProtestingAnybody who has been reading for a while will have no doubt by now picked up that my parents were essentially woolly liberals of the highest order. Part of their plan for a careful and responsible upbringing included not owning a television for the first eight years of my life - and for at least a couple of years afterwards, having one without ITV (the national commercial station) tuned in. This meant that during my formative years, I had to sneak over to my best friend Jane Baker's house to watch Top of the Pops, and experience the contraband delights of ...
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12.08.02On CakeI once attended an interview in which my fellow interviewer asked the hapless candidate a surprising question. After quizzing her about personal work qualities, experience of working within tight deadlines and what she thought she could bring to such a challenging role, he asked her whether a Jaffa Cake was, in fact, a cake or a biscuit.She launched into a response ("It's a biscuit, obviously"), and then pondered out loud at the name ("...of course it's called a cake...") which caused her to stumble and lapse into silence, unable to answer conclusively.The correct answer, of course (and you might want ...
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12.08.02Cab JunkieI'm a cab junkie. I'll readily admit that to anyone. I'm not ashamed and I could probably stop any time I wanted. But I don't want to. There's something exciting about the guilty pleasure of being driven somewhere in exchange for cash and casual conversation that's hard to give up. It probably started in childhood, as these things generally do. We did not take cabs in our family: we had no need to and besides, it didn't fit well with my mother's independent, non-exploitative world-view. We took buses and trains and tubes, and we didn't have a car. Mum made sure, ...
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12.08.02On BooksA couple of years ago, when I lived in Maida Vale, my looney flatmate (who had appalling taste in tourist tat - ethnic carvings and folk art and the like: truly shuddersome) informed me one day that she doesn't like books, because they clutter the house up. Even on the bookshelves. "So where," I inquired, "do you propose I keep them?" I shouldn't have asked. Apparently, bookshelves are for ornaments and photo frames and candles, while any books that I'm not reading at the moment (and there are many, many, many), should be packed into boxes and "stored in the ...
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12.08.02Big HandsMy grandad was a big man - well over six feet tall and broad, with wide shoulders and a shock of white hair. During the war, he was a coastguard, and in a box under the bed I've got the closest thing our family has to an heirloom: an american flag, tattered and worn and missing a few stars, given in gratitude to grandad by an american he pulled from the chilly waters off scotland, with his own hands.He had huge hands, I can remember them distinctly. Big hands, carefully lighting his pipe. Huge fingers, wrapped around a dram of ...
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