My English teacher, Mrs Gyte, had always told us that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I’m writing a story of me so I should write about my beginning, right? Probably no; firstly I can’t remember being zero years old and secondly my beginning probably really starts before conception, and I’ve covered the basics somewhere in here (under the imaginary section entitled “wanking”….that bit would be funny if you’d read it – see also heading).
I thought I’d instead relay some early memories and in order to keep them short here they are in bullet form:
- I was once tasked with looking after my baby sister whilst playing in the sand at Caister-on-sea. I was probably about 3 or 4. I threw sand in her face (I don’t know why and I feel bad for that – sorry sis). I don’t know what happened exactly but she must have eaten the sand or something because moments later she was sick – everywhere. A quick run back to the caravan resulted in a telling-off for leaving her alone (fair, I suppose); that then resulted in me lying about how she was sick.
- One Xmas I got a telephone set, connected by a long wire to…another telephone!! That was cool until the batteries ran out and/or I got bored only being able to talk to my sister.
- I once convinced my sister to cut one of her favourite Sindy doll’s hair. To prove how great it would be I insisted on how amazing an idea it would be. A key part of that persuasion was for me to show her how to cut it to make it look “awesome” (or whatever word we used for that back then). Needless to say the haircut was not “awesome”, a much better description would have to be “fucking awful” but swearing wasn’t allowed at the age of 7. I didn’t convince her it was a great idea and I’m pretty sure she didn’t cut any of her other dolls’ hair. Crew-cuts does not suite Sindy dolls.
- Both my sister and I had a record player which played these thick nylon plastic “record” discs. The record player head had one of those music chime things which rotated across the plastic record, hitting the little metal prongs of various lengths resulting in different musical notes (that was hard to describe, hope you’ve got the concept in your head). Anyway, my inquisitive mind REALLY wanted to know how the record rotated on the turntable (I understood the how the music was played – that bit was easy). But the bit which spins the disc was hidden and I just HAD to see how it worked. Guess who’s record player became the victim of my newly-acquired screwdriver (thanks to Dad’s tool drawer in the kitchen)? That’s right, 4 screws later and a “per-doueiuuung” of a compressed spiral spring as it goes flying across the garden and my sister loses her beloved record player – not even I could fix that! (sorry sis – again)
- Shortly after the record player incident I discovered that a heck of A LOT of things had screws in just waiting for little ol’ me to take apart with my newly discovered secret stash of screwdrivers-a-plenty (hat-tip to kitchen drawers without child-latches) to see how they worked. My favourite thing were the rectangle tape players you could get, the ones which looked a lot like the Star Trek Tricorder (the 1960’s one). Ours even had the same retro black leather case! The best thing I discovered about them is that a little hidden screw inside the mechanism could increase or decrease the playback speed – I discovered the Chipmunks before I even knew they existed! Yay!
- I was advanced for my age – a fact I think my parents were even shocked (or excited?) by. At the age of 5 we were at my Aunty Edie’s house and I recall my aunt disputing my parent’s honest insistence that I was an advanced reader. Their way of proving their point was getting me to read the front-page article of the Daily Record (or it could have been The Mirror, I can’t quite remember that detail). Anyway, I think this was the point where I discovered I hated being in front of people with all attention on me.
- At the back of our house was a massive football field and at the bottom of that was the part of the railway line between Pitsea and Basildon stations. I’m not entirely sure how but one day whilst out playing on said field with my sister (looking after her again) we were asked by some older kids to look after their bikes whilst they went onto the tracks to throw stones at the passing trains. We must have been there for a while – and also completely distracted – because out of nowhere some coppers were suddenly towering over us. My response to the question about why we were was “looking after my sisters friends bikes”. Sorry sis.
- “Mum, can I have 20p to get some sweets from the play centre?”. A firm “no” did not go down well; besides, I had a cunning plan: I’ll use the penny jar and take 20p from that! I’m not sure what is was about a jingling jar being carried across the house which got me caught but my mum was smart – in fact she was too smart for me: she waited until I walked out of the play centre with a gleaming smile and big bag of half-penny sweets in hand before she decided to give me the biggest smack around my ear, take the easily-earned bag of sweets off of me, and frog-marched me home. I can only assume her and Dad ate the sweets later that day. Sorry mum & dad.
- There was a time I think I nearly killed my neighbour. We had a tree at the bottom of our garden which every year produced these pea-pod-looking fruits. One year I convinced my one-year-younger neighbour to eat the peas of one of the pods. I’m not sure what happened exactly but I do remember being grilled by both my mum and Nicky’s mum asking if I know anything about why he’s ill. I denied all knowledge. Sorry Nicky.
- How can I forget the time my cousin Jill decided to play golf in our garden?! I’m pretty sure even she still wonders why she thought facing the dining room window, all teed up and taking a big swing at the ball would NOT end up hitting said big window. Anyway, it did, and she got a huge bollocking for it. Even now I just imagine how my face would have looked as I witnessed it happening right in front of me, mouth wide open in shock. In fact, I think I might have been the one running in grassing her up almost immediately. Sorry Jill.
- My mum’s friend had an old Commodore VIC20 computer. It had stopped working long ago and she gave it to me as a gift – somehow my mum insisted that I was clever enough to find out what was wrong with it and fix it. I get it home and – trusty screwdriver in hand – proceeded to take the thing apart. I discovered this transparent fuse clipped to the main board. Popped to the hardware shop up the road with 8p in hand and got a replacement. Get it home, plug it in and voila! One working computer for me! My mum and dad thought I was this child genius. For me, I felt a fraud receiving that accoladed – it was an 8p fuse, it wasn’t exactly rocket science. I was 9.
And thus begins my cheery venture into all things computer-related: suddenly libraries became this fantastic place where I could get the next big book on programming adventure games; or the book on machine code (that was heavy stuff). Up until this point I wanted to be an architect (no idea where I got that idea from – at some point also being a DJ was a consideration which, oddly, is something I’d inspire to be today) but getting my first computer changed everything. It changed me. The precise and logical way they worked was just something my mind was aligned with. They made me feel intelligent, I could create things, I could destroy things, I was God and the world was made of up 1’s and 0’s.
Of course, when I messed up my code and I got an “illegal operation” message a huge part of me thought I’d done something wrong and it was telling the police. I wasn’t quite as smart as I thought I was.
My world turned upside down just one year later – I’d be ten years old. Welcome to summer 1988…
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