When people were shorter and lived by the water...

All will be revealed...

Eh?...Whose cologne?...Oh, Michael Owen! Now I understand...

You see, I've always been a bit mutton. I used to blame it on Motorhead, who we saw four times in as many weeks on the Bomber tour back in 1980 or whenever it was. Always down the front, heads bangin' against either Fast Eddie's or Lemmy's monitor, it sure can't have helped the lack of vibrations in the air that make it past my ossicles, down the auditory canal and into my noggin.

But, like I say, I've always been a bit mutton, the first classic case of "Half past three" syndrome I can recall occurring when I was back in seminary school...oh, hang on, that was Jim Morrison. No, I was back in Victoria Infants, Wellingborough to be precise, and as a fresh-faced 7 or 8 year old I was queueing with the other sprogs for my daily helping of what was euphemistically called "dinner" in the school canteen. This usually consisted of some bland tasteless reconstituted "meat" concoction with synthetic mashed potato, a couple of sorry looking peas and/or carrots, all drowned in thick brown gravy-tarmac. Luvvly! This was inevitably followed by a bowl of sweet lumpy gloop topped off with strawberry jam as "afters".

Even after a few weeks of suffering this colon-clogging slopfest I wasn't a fan. Then one day I entered the Dining Hall and I sauntered up to the massive sweaty woman with the ladle, she plonked something onto my plate with the subtlety of a cow vacating its bowels. "What's that?" I asked innocently, and she told me a name I didn't recognise from my then short experience of world cuisine. It smelled foul and tasted worse, a bitter taste bud experience that I can remember chewing on for what seemed like at least half an hour before spitting it out and leaving the dining hall feeling really quite ill.

When I got home that afternoon (Yes, we walked the 3/4 mile all on our own. Weren't we brave?) I marched in to the kitchen and Mum took one look at me with my scowling screwed up face still reliving the vile-tasting trauma of "dinner", and asked "What's wrong with you?" "We had summat 'orrid for dinner" sez me "What was that then?" sez Mum. "It were called Blivver" says I. It made Mum laugh did that!

Well, I couldn't blame that on Lemmy & Co could I? From that day on and for the rest of my school days I took the sarnies my Mum gave me for lunch and ate them in the reprobates' room with the scallies on detention and the poor kids who couldn't afford school dinners. They didn't know how lucky they were! Unsurprisingly I could not stand the very thought of liver for years, and never touched the stuff again until I met B. Ironically we are having Blivver and bacon for tea tonight!
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While we're on early schooldays, probably my most humiliating experience in the halls of academia happened a couple of years or so later. Now attending Croyland Juniors, one day I went to school feeling a tad under the weather. It was winter, bloody cold as I remember, and I had a big jumper on. The longer the day went on, and when you're a nipper school days seemed to go on forever, the worse I felt, until somewhere around lunchtime I emptied the contents of my stomach down the jumper and all over my English text book.

The school nurse took me away and cleaned me up, but she said I might have to wear my coat all day as she couldn't find a spare jumper to lend me. Back in class I was feeling rough, and tried to hug the radiator without burning myself on its blistering surface - you remember those big old iron monstrosities don't you? Anyway, during the break, the girl I sat with, Hazel Smith was her name, asked me if I was ok (no chance of being sent home back then, oh no. You had to suffer, it was all part of growing up) and was I warm enough? "Not really" sez me through chattering teeth. "It's ok" sez Hazel "I've got a spare jumper you can borrow" and pulled a big fluffy pink thing out of her duffel bag. Let's just say my mates pointed and laughed a lot, but sod the embarrassment, it was warm.

Of course, nowadays I would have been sent home in an ambulance with a teacher fawning over me in case my parents had the "compo" thought, and even if I had stayed at school me and my pink hairy jumper would have been all over Farcebook or whatever.
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In that same learning establishment I once swapped a mint copy of the 1964 single by The Beatles "Ain't She Sweet" for a bag of marbles and a magnet. It's a charming little ditty, doncha think? Written in 1927 would you believe! The b-side featured Tony Sheridan & The Beatles doing "If You Love Me Baby", as I'm sure you know ;). I was probably never going to rival Richard Branson in the entrepreneurial stakes was I?

O, for simpler times...:)

PS - Oddly, while Googling for the name of the song on the b-side, I came across a worn copy for sale on EBay for £45 (must mean it would be about £100 mint), being sold by a record shop not 5 miles from where I'm sat now. I wonder if it's the same copy?