A Brief Autobiographical Treatise

I was born in 1970, just a few months after Concorde had taken to the skies for the first time. This meant that in my mind I was a child of the modern age, born into the white heat of the technical revolution. Of course I knew none of this at the time and spent my formative months lying in a cot whilst my parents watched Steptoe and Son on a black and white television rented from D.E.R.

My earliest memory is of crying on Swanage beach in Dorset when my father told me that I couldn’t have an ice cream. It seems that from an early age my love for a seaside Mr Whippy was deeply ingrained. Having spoken to my mother at great length about this since, it seems that I did actually lead a rather active life before this first memory. Indeed, I have been reliably informed that when I was 2 years old I sat on a Chinaman’s hat in a barbers shop and giggled.

The next thing I remember is being whipped into hospital to have my foreskin removed. I have since gone over this event many times in my mind and have always come to the same conclusion. It didn’t need to happen. But I’m glad it did and I’ll tell you why.

One evening I was splashing about in the bath and my father was over by the sink keeping an eye on me. You must remember that I was 3, so there was nothing wrong, sinister or kinky about my father loitering in the bathroom with me. He looked down at my dinky-dido (my pet name at the time for a penis) and said to me “Does that hurt?”