This is a funny story although, for me, it wasn’t at the time. It became one of my Mother’s stock tales calculated to embarrass me in front of friends and relatives when I was a teenager. The year was 1962 and I was at the grand old age of 9.

It was a blazingly hot day in August and I was playing alone, my best friend was away on a family holiday so I didn’t have anyone to keep me company.

I was wearing swimming trunks, plimsolls, a sun hat and nothing else, although every bit of exposed skin had been slathered in sun cream; we already knew how easily I burned.

Sitting in the garden idly messing about with my collection of Dinky and Corgi cars I decided that I wanted a bit more excitement and my wandering eye came to the old plum tree.

I’d always been somewhat timid and had never found the courage to climb trees like my friends did but this was my last summer in the hated house and my last chance to prove that I could at least be brave enough for this easy climb.

Well, if I didn’t do it now the mood was on me, the chances were I never would so I walked up to the tree and began to plan my ascent. I carefully put a foot on a convenient knot, pushed up and grabbed the lowest branch.

Having very skinny arms I had trouble lifting my own negligible weight but with absolute determination I heaved myself up to the branch and sat there for a couple of minutes to prepare for the next part.

Now full of pride and determination I reached for the next branch and hauled myself up, finally achieving my goal to lie on my stomach legs hanging down one way and arms the other; not the most dignified position but I’d made it!

Getting from there to a sitting position took every little bit of courage I could find but after a lot of wriggling I managed it. Standing up was the easiest bit and at last there I was, king of all I surveyed and only a bit scared, well quite scared to be honest.

Full of pride and self-congratulation I let go of the trunk, spread my arms wide in triumph and…

Fell off.

The normal result of falling out of a tree was a broken wrist caused by the instinct to break one’s fall but this wasn’t to be my fate. For one thing I was too shocked to think about putting my hand out, for another I fell on soft ground, right in the  middle of a stinging nettle patch.

For a few seconds I lay there, relieved that I hadn’t hurt myself, then it dawned on me where I was and I let out an ear-splitting shriek of outrage after which I jumped up and ran aimlessly round the garden screaming my head off.

Being so skinny the legs of my trunks didn’t fit very well so I’d been stung absolutely everywhere and it hurt, a lot.

It must have been a hilarious sight as my Mother, alerted by my screams, chased me round the garden while I, out of my head with pain, wouldn’t stop running away.

Eventually she cornered me and carried me, still thrashing around and screaming, to the outside laundry room, stripped off my trunks and started pouring cold water over me.

For the next few days I had to suffer the indignity of being smothered in calamine lotion, all over and I had several sleepless nights caused by the intolerable itching from the hundreds of stings.

I suppose I can forgive my Mother for telling this tale to her friends and, during my adolescence, to mine. Everyone in the village thought it was hilarious and on the plus side I didn’t break anything although at the time I wished I had.

Oh, I never climbed another tree.

Love

After moving to London in 1975 I found myself in the care of an orthopaedic consultant who decided that my knee problem needed surgery and later that year I had the first operation. Despite being such an accident prone boy I’d not actually been in hospital since the entertaining affair of the tonsils so pretty well everything that happened was completely new.

It all started to go pear-shaped when the anaesthetist came to see me the day I was admitted. The problem was my big sister had made me a very chunky towelling dressing gown for my birthday and sitting in a chair wearing it I looked as though I was average weight for five foot ten so he prescribed the anaesthetic on that not bothering to have me weighed in those days it was all calculated by weight.

The pre-med, about an hour before theatre, was an injection that a lot of people would pay big money for and by the time the trolley arrived I was completely off my head, lying there looking up at the strip lights passing overhead was like a really crappy hospital drama. To make things worse after I’d been wired up and had an oxygen mask on the anaesthetist came up with a syringe, picked up my wrist and said, I swear that this is true, the immortal line “just a little prick in your hand, son” I was in hysterics and they had to up the level of gas to oxygen to stop me, then the world went fuzzy, dark and out.

I woke up screaming with pain being cuddled to the most immense bosom I’ve ever been anywhere near and a strange voice murmuring comforting things in my ear calling me “baby boy” and things like that. When I got my eyes open I could just about make out the very comforting and motherly face of the West Indian nurse who was holding me but who then unceremoniously stabbed a needle into my bum and I was asleep again.

I shouldn’t have woken up on the ward, I should have been in the recovery room surrounded by machines and very impersonal efficient nurses but because my weight had been massively overestimated I’d been over anaesthetised and they couldn’t wake me so, once all the readings were normal, decided it was safe for me to go back upstairs. On the plus side waking up in the arms of a surrogate mother was very reassuring.

There’s a second part to this comedy but that’s enough for now

Love

A couple of weeks into the new term we had our first craft lesson which was making lino cuts. We all dutifully gathered round the teacher’s desk for a demonstration of the technique and a stern lecture on safety, always point the cutting tool away from you. Then we trooped back to our desks now armed with a small square of lino and a wickedly sharp cutting tool. Drawing was never a great skill of mine so it took me quite a long time to get a design worked out and then I was running short of time to get the cutting finished.

I’m aggressively right-handed and my left hand as always been weak so try as I might I couldn’t get the lino to stay still while I gouged out the design. In the end impatience got the better of me and without thinking of the consequences held it firmly by the edge furthest away from me, right in front of the cutting tool. Moments later my right hand slipped and with deadly accuracy I stabbed the tool straight into my thumb, over halfway through. There was pandemonium as other kids tried to avoid being sprayed while I waved my hand around in panic making everything worse, getting blood all over my shirt, shorts, face and legs. Eventually the teacher got me to stay still long enough wrap his handkerchief round my thumb before dragging me to his car for a quick drive to casualty.

I must have looked like the victim of a knife wielding maniac and poor Mum nearly had a fit when I arrived home covered in blood from head to foot and sporting a huge bandage on my thumb but fate has a way of getting back at silly boys, not being allowed to get the bandage wet meant that I had ten days of assisted bathing to suffer.

Sometimes I wonder how I survived long enough to have all those adolescent problems.

Love

Anyone who knows me in the flesh would find it hard to believe that I was actually quite good at rugby, all my life I’ve been clinically underweight and as a boy was physically underdeveloped however in rugby what I lacked in strength and size I more than compensated for with sheer determination and a complete lack of scruples, having some pretty serious anger issues helped. Opposing hookers were accustomed to getting their shins raked by my studs and I became quite deadly with a well aimed knee, all shielded from the ref by the rest of the scrum. The games Master decided that I should try out for the under 14s which meant attending an after school session, a long bus ride and then a mile walk home.

Sitting in the bus shelter I realised that I needed to “go” and, even though I hated the places, it would have to be the public toilet. I hated them because He’d chosen a toilet as the venue for one of his assaults but needs must when the devil drives. This was in the days when you literally had to spend a penny to get into the cubicles which at least meant the locks always worked so in I went and got on with business.

Idly reading the graffiti on the door and walls was amusing especially the claims as to the size of people’s equipment, 12 inches forsooth! I almost laughed out loud when I got to one that said “Are you a young boy looking for fun? Be here at…” it was like an obscene recruitment poster for the Boy Scouts. Then to my absolute horror a face appeared in the big gap between door and floor and a man’s voice announced “Well, that’s a pretty sight!” I’d say I nearly shat myself but that was the object of the exercise I just froze and gaped at the apparition, it’s really difficult to be dignified or brave with your trousers and pants round your ankles. Eventually the face disappeared and I heard the outside door open then close so finishing as quickly as possible I recovered pants and trousers then left the cubicle praying that I hadn’t been tricked, half expecting to find the man waiting for me. He wasn’t so I fled the building back to the relative safety of the bus shelter to sit huddled up in the corner.

I’d like to say that the experience put me off public toilets for good but sadly not so, I started hanging around them before I was 14. Not that one though, it was opposite the school in full view of the boy’s boarding house and the Headmaster’s residence.

Love