4/20
It was during these early years that my love of writing first developed. I remember hosting a special lunchtime classroom rendition of a story I had written about a spaceman. The highlight of the story was when his lunchtime fish fingers flew out of the spaceship window because of zero gravity. The marvellous reaction of my classmates to this story set me on the road to becoming a writer.
In 1981 I moved to senior school where for the first few months I was teased for having a briefcase. I quickly gave into peer pressure and got my parents to buy me a blue Adidas bag. This was later replaced by a red Puma one. It was probably the Puma bag that got me my first date at 13. I took ‘my gal’to the local fete and she tried to make me go apple bobbing. I refused, so she took the mickey out of my Dunlop Greenflash instead.
Around this time I started doing homemade tape-recorded shows with my good friend Simon Rhodes. We would pretend to be Laurel and Hardy and other assorted characters. On one occasion we were recording the song ‘Underneath the Mango Tree’ from the James Bond film Dr No, and when we reached the final note I broke wind. This provided hilarity to Simon and myself for many months. To this day I can’t listen to the song without imagining a little ‘parp’ at the finale. Why not watch the film and imagine it for yourself? It certainly adds something to an already impressive storyline.
