In an alternate reality I was born standing up, and, talking back no less. Raised by pater, a travelling atomic weapons salesman, and mamma, a kindly teacher of Welsh Sanskrit in the deep dark fields of Lancashire, at the age of three I had the ability to draw like Picasso in his Blue Period but thought better of it. At age seven I won small Lancashire village Holcombe Brook in a game of marbles, swapped it for the early beat single Ain't She Sweet by Tony Sheridan and The Beatles, and swapped this for a large hadron collider, which I still have in the loft somewhere.
School was a breeze, nay several breeze blocks with a roof. It was while at school in the winter of '67 that I collapsed in Quantum Mechanics Class 2B, and was rushed to hospital where it was discovered I had a severe allergy to v-neck jumpers. Age 9 I met and had a clandestine affair with Gina Lollobrigida, behind the bike sheds with a variety of exotic fruit. Nothing nefarious you understand, but the fruit was beautifully arranged. Behind the bike sheds was also where I smoked my first fag. He wasn't best pleased. Discretion being the better part of discretionary, I ran away from home and sailed the world with Sir Francis Chichester. He wasn't best pleased either. Abandoned on Diego Garcia, the US Navy mistook me for a small Russian spy and built the prison at Guantanamo Bay specially to hold me. Bet you didn't know that did you? I escaped from Cuba by disguising myself as a cigar, but not before being hand rolled on the thigh of a dusky maiden, a most pleasurable experience and I recommend it highly.
On returning to school and having used bribery, bread pudding and subtle thought manipulation I passed my 11-plus and invented Steve Jobs. It was 1970 and he was no use at all. It was around this time that I first kindled an interest in Association Football, and the new fangled concept of jumpers for goalposts. A use for the v-neck at last! Unfortunately this sporting interest was curtailed by a then lifelong fear of whistles which was overcome by 17 sessions of whistle aversion therapy. It is believed the phobia was caused by my pater, Gawd Bless 'Im, a cheery bloke who used to rise with the larks and whistle a happy tune while crashing about the ramshackle hut in a carefree fashion.
Although the scholarly life was pushing me in the direction of a life of drudgery as an accountant, I followed my inner calling and went on the road with the Goombay Dance Band for five years, along with my staff of thirteen. Just before setting out Patrick Spens the arse wiper and Mrs Shreeves the spittle groomer both had to be fired for crimes of passion with a carrot on the Upper Lawn, so I was soon down to a paltry staff of eleven, but enough to make a team. And so it came to pass that many a dull afternoon betwixt gigs were spent playing Association Fitbah with The Goombay Dance Band and their roadies. After the game it was regular practice for Joe Goombay and Mick Dance and the Band to hold court in their hotel room and make ginormous cakes which were passed around with gay abandon. Our heads were swimming with the effects of too much marzipan I can tell you! At some point during this malarkey a cherry was lost with a green haired girl from Scunthorpe whose name has receded into the mists of time. We'll call her Sophie Tightly, and why not?
Flying off at several tangents, more may follow, or not.
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