Today would have been Ruth Wilkes’ 47^th birthday.

I met Ruth a dozen or so times, usually connected with Maureen’s former job at Dovedales nursery in Chelmsford. Fun and cheekiness are the two words that come to mind. She would always hug me. When asked how she was, more often than not the answer was “living the dream”, which always made me smile. Maureen remembers Ruth pinching her bum – and a shed load of other people’s buttock cheeks – on a regular basis. She also had a passion for children, and strong ideas on upbringing and nurture.

Ruth was found hanging from her attic three years ago.

Maureen recalls in particular a day out with Ruth at Maldon, accompanied by Rory and by Ruth’s two children, Jacob and Rebecca. Sitting by a lake where swans nest, Ruth was beside herself with glee that Maureen was unsure whether or not swans could fly. And never let her forget it.

RIP Ruth. Your rays of sunshine are missed.

 

 

 

My good friend and old university mucker Shaun Wilson once told me about a holiday when his wife Fran was so engrossed in the Sebastian Faulks novel ‘Birdsong’ that he took the kids off for the day. And that Fran wept while she read it.

The front line slaughter traumas experienced by British soldier Stephen Wraysford in WW1 stay with the reader long after the book is finished. Faulks revisits the theme in ‘Where my Heart Used to Beat’. A soldier who cannot take any more after four years in the trenches shoots himself but is kept alive so that he can be executed as a traitor by military police.

My respect for the soldiers who endured both World Wars is unlimited. That the overwhelming cost they paid for the horrors of war should be remembered, forever, through poppies and wreaths and ceremonies, is necessary and just. Through a wider lens, the two wars may have accounted for over 100 million civilian and military casualties. They clearly showcased the very deliberately planned genocides of the Holocaust experiment and the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps the British fire-bombing of Dresden belongs in that list.

How do you even begin to gauge the pain and suffering and fallout down the years? All one can say – as was said after both wars – is ‘never again’.

And yet ……..we go to work and watch TV as the business of war carries on globally……… Politicians who wear poppies sanction the sale of arms which are killing, maiming and injuring ordinary people in Yemen, where at least 10,000 people have died in a civil war, and millions more are now on the brink of starvation. Houthi rebels remain blockaded in the port of Hodeidah by a Saudi-led coalition armed with British- and US-made weapons.

Have I missed something? Is there a hidden or unspoken chunk of wisdom that justifies the post-WW2 carnage in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen?

If a terrorist in a car mows down 5 people in London, we remember the victims, and listen to the outpouring of emotion. When Western drone strikes accidentally wipe out innocent brown-skinned families, and Yemenis cannot feed their children, our attention span is short. Kettle on. Then it springs back to attention on Remembrance Sunday. Heads bowed. ‘Never again’.

That’s cognitive dissonance.

In late 2015, Hilary Benn made what media widely termed as one of the great orations in Parliament, encouraging a bombing campaign on ISIS in Syria. The Daily Telegraph described it as “delivered from the heart”, and “an inspiring example of a leader stepping forward in the face of adversity”. Other papers made similar noises.

Personally, I saw a complete fucking idiot who blithely ignored the spreading conflagration and loss of innocent life that Western bombs always bring. Not to mention the refugees and attendant Muslim desire for revenge. Hilary possesses a functioning brain and a pair of eyes that enables him to read history books, and was brought up by a dad who so correctly saw violence as the very last resort of a civilised society. The very last resort.

In fact, if Hilary had done even a small amount of homework, or just talked to M16, he could have figured out that our Qatari and Saudi ‘allies’ were funding ISIS. The indications also pointed to ‘technical support’ from the US and Israel, in the drive to further destabilise Syria. There’s your answer and the point of focus. If I can find that out, then so can he. But no, Hilary drummed up the past threats of Mussolini and Hitler. We were faced by ‘fascists’. What an unbelievably stupid cunt, to make that comparison and cheer-lead unnecessary death from his safe, privileged position. Lobotomised commentators hailed him as the new red leader, while the Telegraph published this piece of risible shite:

“Jeremy Corbyn, by contrast, looked desperate, shifting uncomfortably as he searched the rafters or shot glances of despair around an enthralled chamber. His exhortation for flight had been underwhelming and now – bullied into allowing a free vote – he saw his lukewarm appeal to cower before Islamic State (Isil) dismissed by rigour and phlegm. He looked crushed.”

Written by Colonel Tim Collins. Can only hope that Tim got over his sadness that we haven’t yet gone to full-blown war in Syria. You do feel for him. No doubt he’ll proudly sport a poppy tomorrow. Then maybe release his bile and phlegm playing ‘Call of Duty’?

Corbyn fascinates me. The Greens receive my vote now, but in all matters of war, JC is a moral giant. I love that he never wavers in his votes against bombing brown people. What a star. Whereas many of his peers circle around and around in a preposterous pantomime where their poppies starkly contradict their notions that it might be time for a new war, because there is a new official Bad Guy at large.

Take your pick: Saddaam, Gaddafi, ISIS, Assad. Putin? Iran? We may sell them some deadly weapons first, but rest assured – once the money is in we’ll bomb the place to fuck if ever they use them. Probably give our contractors the rebuild work and privatise state assets to pay for that.

John Madden made a memorable observation to John Devane and I, while we had a bite to eat in May at the Thurrock Thameside Nature Park cafe. I’m briefly paraphrasing his words, which were something like this: “Jesus said thou shalt not kill. Not you can kill in self-defence, or go to war to uphold democracy. Just thou shalt not kill. Plain and simple.” This wasn’t a Christian gathering, but it resonated deeply with me.

My sense is that millions of people – maybe tens of millions – are going through a dark night of the soul. I do wonder if there is a global political movement in gestation. A collective action bubbling under that will target all forms of violence and war, and show that humans can band in ways that release a profound and miraculous power.

Change has to start somewhere. The red/blue choice solves nothing anymore. Two heads, same aggressive, debt-funded beast. Starve it, if you value your poppy.

And I wonder if Tony Benn has had a quiet word with St Peter about his boy?

 

 

Maureen and I can be decades slow on the uptake.

We have just started to regularly use Film 4, which began life 20 years ago. As part of my quest to avoid the dross on mainstream TV (Blog 40), we found that the channel was showing ‘Turner’ last week. Always big fans of director Mike Leigh, we downloaded it and just loved watching Timothy Spall excel himself as the early 19^th century painter and watercolourist JMW Turner. Fascinating from start to finish. Particularly enjoyed Spall’s lengthening grunts, his use of spit on the canvasses and his take on Turner’s pragmatic relationships with females.

The riveting attention to period detail by Mr Leigh made me book tickets for his very recent film, ‘Peterloo’, at the cinema last Friday. Important and horrific piece of class war history, but we both thought it was slow, and could have been edited down by half an hour.

Our attention was seriously distracted by the cinema’s complete lack of heating, for which we persuaded the Chelmsford Odeon to dish out free tickets for another movie.

A couple of days previously Maureen had downloaded again from Film 4. Two films – ‘Hunger’ and ‘Shame’ – by another revered director, Steve McQueen. He made the impressive ‘12 Years a Slave’ – and these didn’t disappoint either.

Michael Fassbender was bountifully good in both. As a sex addict in ‘Shame’ and then as Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker. His acting made me think of Daniel Day-Lewis, each time.

I had a quick peek at the Odeon listings tonight. Generally dumbed-down mediocrity, but I noticed a film entitled ‘Widows’. And who should the director be….but Steve McQueen. We’re planning to go tomorrow.

Does that allow me to play the synchronicity card again?

Film 4 led us sofa-dwellers to Mike Leigh, and then McQueen. We get our arses out of the house, to change the scenery, but Leigh will again be followed by McQueen. Different seats, same pathway.

And now we’ve discovered the Sony Movie and Sky Cinema channels to help us get through the dark evenings. Better late than never. We are thinking about getting mobile phones soon. This autumn is turning out OK.

 

 

Imagine a field bordered on the right by a wood, as you look. With a long hedge, of about head height, coming out at right angles from the wood, dissecting the field. Earlier this week this was the setting for a dream, in which I stood quietly in the nearest of those right angles.

Over the hedge multiple sets of antlers were visible. There were no clues whether the deer were aware of my presence, but I assumed they were, given their ability to smell predators. The antlers looked as if they belonged to strong, healthy animals. They were moving slowly towards a passageway through the woods which linked into my location. It wasn’t certain that they would come through, it would be their choice. My role was to wait.

Whatever dreams are, we instinctively recognise those with a good feel. With propitious omens, or the presence of benevolence. I wrote this one down happily.

In my computer files there are various dream lists that I might get around to consolidating one day. The most recurrent, stretching over decades, has been the milkman dream, undoubtedly a legacy of some kind from my Chelmsford and South Woodham Ferrers milk rounds, which kept me employed from May 1986 until August 1993.

The round has cropped up time and time again in my night-time reveries, always with an unfinished aspect. I would guess more than a hundred times, which indicated to me that this was important. For instance, I might be sitting at home, and the phone would ring. The depot manager perhaps informing me that I had missed seven houses in South Woodham Ferrers, or a whole road on the Hylands estate, in Chelmsford.

Or I might remember, within the dream, that I had not delivered to a whole section of the round for so long that the customers had switched delivery firms. And maybe the float was now unavailable, or broken down.

These dreams have caused much head scratching and soul searching. I sense that certain dreams are there for the spiritual guidance that can be lacking in our everyday lives, trapped in matter. Did I need to go back to my past to re-examine issues, and try to resolve various hurts and aches? Or was I being told that my task in this life was so under-achieved that reincarnation would be necessary. If milk symbolises an archetype, was I not giving out enough love? Was my wellspring of love exhausted?

When I woke on January 18, 2018, the dream had changed. I was near the end of the round with about 14 loaves of bread spare, and just one more address where I knew it had been ordered.

Whatever that over-abundance might signify, it felt like massive progress.

 

Writing the last blog brought me down. I had forgotten what an isolated and lonely time that was. Never anybody to confide in. Physical intimacies with girls rare and never of any comfort beyond ‘well at least I’ve done that’. And male friendships felt shallow. Most of my peers seemed to be having a better time than me. But I couldn’t acknowledge that without shame. The energy to put one foot in front of the other carried me along. There had to be a better horizon.

The one thing I excelled at was cricket, due to hundreds of hours of practice in our back garden. Aged 15, I knocked up my first half-century for the school. 52 not out. Even then I was afraid that the calling out of my name in the subsequent Monday morning assembly would trigger some kind of teasing.

I was selected for the school first team at the age of 16, when most of the lads were 17 or 18. Opening batsmen. My technique was simple. Let the bowler generate the energy and wait to hook or cut to the boundary those balls pitched short and off target, effortlessly redirecting the flow.

Sometimes Eric would come to watch, driving his van into the school grounds and sitting in his navy blue overalls. He had encouraged me to be wicketkeeper when fielding, so as to be involved in every ball. I captained the team in 1975, my last year.

Best cricket snapshot: we played Upminster that summer. Facing the first ball was the nervous moment. I watched the bowler pace out his run, turn around and head back in. In the second or so after he released it, my instincts from the garden took over. The thing was flying directly at my face, not the ground. I stepped slightly to the right and hooked it from near the bridge of my nose. Up, up and away it soared, over the boundary, over the school fence, over the trees in the lane outside. To cheers from our team, I turned back and looked at the bowler. A broad-shouldered little fucker. What a pleasure to send his intimidation where it belonged.

Cricket was also the dimension where sport and data collection first came together in my head. Aged 12, I kept records of Essex County Cricket club’s batting and bowling performances. Copied painstakingly from my parents’ Daily Telegraph into exercise books. That was extended to soccer and then, over a decade later, to horse racing.

One last school story makes me smile. After I gave up rugby, and switched to hockey, in the sixth form, we were practising one afternoon over on the large playing fields north of the school. My side lost possession, and the ball went to Dave Baldock, who was goal-hanging in our half. There was 20 yards between us.

The only way to catch him was to throw away my hockey stick and run like the wind. As he approached the penalty area and prepared to shoot, I threw myself through the air and brought him down with a spectacular rugby tackle. Everybody fell over with laughter except Dave, who I never liked much. I was sent off and trotted back to the dressing room happily breaking into a chuckle every few yards at my anarchic behaviour.

But the best years of your life? Not for me. Thankful that I got away. And never any inclination to go back.

 

 

By the time that I reached the sixth form, teenage years at home had become boring. I cannot have been much fun to live with. I remember arriving at the stage where speaking to Mum, Dad or Neil was an effort. Staying in my room most evenings, reading, or listening to music, coming down only to do homework or say goodnight. How did they put up with me?

Did I ever tell my parents where I was going, when the pub and party years began? No recall. Off I would roar on my moped, first a Raleigh and then a souped-up, orange-painted Fantic, which could fly along at 70 mph. Quite regularly to the section of Old Leigh where three pubs – the Smack, Peter Boat and Crooked Billet – would play host to mini-pub crawls. I would often come home when all were in bed. Usually with at least three or four pints of cheap beer in my bloodstream. I lost control of these vehicles on several occasions, through excessive risk-taking. But never emerged with much more than a few scratches.

Paul Seligson held a birthday party while his parents were away. My first time where girls and drink were in equal abundance. What might we chat about? I didn’t have a lot to say to anyone beyond football and music. No thoughts on the IRA, coal miners or handbag colours. A bundle of nerves until a few beers went down my neck. Everybody kopped off. I was never a predator, but the second of two girls that showed keen interest dragged me onto the floor in a bedroom, where we could hear a couple having sex in the nearby bed. A pioneering experience for me, but it never happened enough in the next year or two.

Discos were no help. If only there were some financial claim I could put in for the dreary, endless hours at the Talk of the South, Zhivagos, Zero 6 and God knows where else I wasted my precious time on somebody else’s rituals.

Looking in from the sides, drinking watered-down lager, bombarded by music that didn’t ring my bell but hardly hearing the conversation. Going home early, alone, but at least free.

John Devane remembers me giving him a lift home from one of Alan Read’s parties. That was probably a six-pint job. We laughed as I tried to drive in a straight line. One evening when the Fantic’s engine died I walked the thing about eight miles home, and used the pavement at Bread and Cheese hill, in Thundersley, to freewheel some of the way down. A police car cruised alongside as I reached the foot, and I was admonished for violating the Highway Code. And subsequently taken to court, where I received the first of my four convictions. Eric defended me, highlighting “an innocuous crime” by a “model citizen”. There was a fine to pay.

Another time I was breathalysed by the cops, and was just over the limit. Somehow, miraculously, they let me off with a warning. Wow. They must have been in a good mood.

John Attwell used to throw regular parties. One where I was so drunk that I fell over hanging onto a girl named Debbie Lucas. We crashed through his open front door onto the driveway, hitting our heads on the gravel. Then I drove the six miles home. Laura Parsons held a party, where our history teacher tried to hit on Laura’s mum. A girl called Liz grabbed me, in her extreme drunkenness. Saw me for a drink the next week, and chucked me the next day. Regular girlfriends included Janice, whose surname eludes me, and Tina, who I liked the most, but coupled up with just weeks before university. So she looked elsewhere.

Something better had to be in the offing. I wanted a good-hearted, loving, attractive woman to open up like a flower for me, on a permanent basis. Paul, Al Campbell and Nick Eastwell had all settled into those types of relationships. It looked like the prize. Instead I endured a few relationships, or stumbled into rare, drunken one-offs with people that I didn’t really fancy or even like. Frustrating didn’t begin to describe it. Imprisoned in my own head, with steam let off mainly through a new habit of joke telling.

School was little better. I stopped attending French A-level lessons in my last year. I didn’t enjoy speaking it anymore, and so decided that I was opting out. Incredible that I was allowed to get away with it. My parents never knew. One of a lifetime of unilateral decisions, on which I consulted nobody. So for French A-level I received a second O-level, hardly surprising.

In my 40s, the notion came to me that I would have immensely enjoyed a Steiner school, where students find topics of optimum fascination, and then focus on those. Not sure that Westcliff did little more than mould good corporate material, although others may differ.

While I awaited A-level results I found a job on Southend seafront, next to the Hope Hotel pub. Selling hot dogs and burgers. Shitty pay, which the aptly named landlord, Mr Black, reduced further after a week. I decided to pay him back. Ostensibly agreeing, but pinpointing an evening when he was very busy, and I would be able to shut the stand and take the full money owed. I left him a note explaining the error of his ways, and roared with delight as I ran away towards the pier, free again.

When the A-level results came through, a crushingly disappointing D for History blew any chance of studying the subject at Southampton. The surprise was a B in Russian. Birmingham University offered me a place on that basis, and suddenly it became apparent that I would be heading there alongside my old mucker Paul Seligson. Paul and I had grown apart over the last year, as he disappeared almost completely inside a girl called Jane. But he had bought himself a Morris Minor, and offered to take me and my luggage, the bulk of which was a stereo player and a pile of LPs.

I was ripe for the move. Had to endure six or so weeks of work at Basildon hospital to put a few more quid in the bank. I worked in the laundry, sorting out dirty sheets. Patiently waiting for my life to begin.

 

 

 

 

 

On last night’s evening stroll I sat awhile in the dark by Great Waltham’s WW1 memorial, and was joined by a little companion. A black and white cat that has convened with me at the same spot previously. He/she loves to be stroked and tickled.

It took me back to the miserable wet night in December 1971 when Gordon Banks saved the penalty from Geoff Hurst (Blog 41). While the highlights were on TV we heard what sounded like a cat meowl outside the front door at Bowers Gifford. I took a look, to find a stray black and white kitten looking bedraggled and lost.

So we took her in. We had quite recently lost a dog to old age, and Phyllis took Fred (as Neil named her) to her heart. She had the run of the fields at the back, and the undivided attention of four Godiers.

A decade or two after Fred, and living in Chelmsford, I had the pleasure of looking after Milly, and then Sushi and Doodle. When they were sadly departed, we forgot about cats until late 2010, when Lauren insisted that her life would be incomplete without a kitten. That was a tricky ask, as we were renting, and allowed no pets, but Lauren outmanoeuvred us through dogged persistence.

Somehow we ended up with three male kittens: Bob, Peter and Pastille. The latter duet turned out to be female, and Peter got pregnant, so we renamed her Pippa. Before this, Lauren and Josie wanted another kitten, Daisy, who has stayed a girl. Pippa then begat Henry, Scruffy (now Rosie), Charlie and Toby Lerone, but we sold Toby Lerone and Henry got run over (Blog 36).

I wrote him this elegy, entitled ‘The Tank’ (because he was a stout lad).

When you left, you took a piece of my heart with you

Pride Rock is looking empty.

One less bowl at the morning feed.

 

That proud dark chest, flecked with white.

That rumbling purr, vibrating benevolently.

 

Laying in the sun, by the Buddha

In you would trot, at any kitchen noise.

 

I miss your appetite

I miss your slight wobble, as you sat, looking,

With unconditional love.

 

No more Henry on my desk

Rubbing our heads together.

 

A rose grows over your memory

See you in another life

My forever friend

 

We’ve still got Pastille, Bob and Daisy, plus the three ‘blacks’, as we call them, Pippa, Rosie and Charlie. Pastille is the fussiest, and needs plenty of raw chicken in the winter to keep her coat healthy. Bob is a tart who will be intimate with anyone. Charlie is feral, and lives outside in the summer. Rosie is elegant, and identifiable by a tail that ends in a question mark. Daisy is a loner, who bullies the others. Pippa is low maintenance, with a purr that could be the universe itself vibrating.

And I am a pussy magnet, according to my wife. Below, Bob and Charlie on my lap, and Pastille guarding my halo. It’s blurred.

 

 

 

 

I’m increasingly reluctant to be drawn on the divisive and inflammatory circus that is contemporary politics. But tomorrow’s US mid-term elections warrant an honest appraisal.

Has anyone in any of our lifetimes divided people like Donald Trump? I wouldn’t choose to spend time in his company. Clearly racist and sexist. No doubt in my mind that he has substantial US and Russian mob connections. Someone who back-tracks on previous statements like the rest of us eat and breathe. Nasty. Incredible that this bull in the china shop has lasted two years.

But a Nazi Kremlin agent? Or a populist hero? Really?

I have learned to mute the mass media vomit. Don’t care about Big Don’s trigger-happiness on the tweets, the meandering and bizarre press conferences, and his possession of a penis shaped like a mushroom. Beyond all that, I see something that will enrage some observers.

The same bullshit as Barack Obama, although admittedly with none of the former’s President’s style, grace and masterful command of public relations.

But strip away Trump’s grossness and Obama’s artifice, and you are left with the same support of debt and war as the default US policy positions. More and more borrowed money and resources being poured into the US war machine which sends soldiers, planes and war ships into other countries under the banner of peace and democracy.

Trump wants to raise already colossal US military spending 13% in two years. Obama, Bush and Clinton acted similarly when they also wore the captain’s hat. The very notion that there are great differences between Democrats and Republicans about the best way to run an empire is not backed by fact, to these eyes.

Obama’s presidency was – IMVHO – disgraceful. Where to start? Maybe the three times as many whistle-blowers arrested as under all previous administrations, or the reneging on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay. Not keeping his word on raising the minimum wage and delivering single payer health care. The policy of using drones to kill American citizens, and letting all the torturers on the US payroll off the hook.

‘Yes we can’ said Barack. The legacy of the ‘nice guy’ includes his failure to halt the foreclosure crisis, and the millions of Americans that lost their homes, or to hold any major banker accountable for the widespread damage it inflicted. Instead, some $16 trillion in taxpayer-funded bank bailouts, backstops and loan guarantees. Bankers were too big to jail and too important to investigate. Why?

Worst, for me, was how the first black president blockaded and bombed developing countries like every white president before him, and added the scalp of Libya, a once-prosperous African country where black Africans are currently being auctioned as slaves.

Just saying. Because our most influential news sources do not.

Leading into the US mid-terms, both sides seem deranged. Prominent Democrats suggesting violence against Republican opponents while the GOP paints the Democrats as angry, unhinged mobs. Both sides bringing pre-formed opinions to everything the other side does. The disappearance of rationality is such that whatever happens this week will likely be deemed ‘fake’ by the opposing side.

Worse, there looks to be no turning back. No return to rationality, and an ever-declining trust in government. Why would anyone vote for any of these fuckers? How many of them flag up well-considered positions on the disasters of bellicose foreign policy and the iniquities of a debt-based financial system in their manifestos or on their websites? In the UK, the Green Party does exactly this, taking the kindest, most radical position. There has to be a start somewhere.

My logical political stance – which both sides hate hearing – is to unashamedly opt out of the interminable left and right shit fight. It is no longer fit for purpose, always leading to debt and war whichever way you lean. In the UK, the years when a Labour vote held out the promise of compassionate government have long gone. The bloke below had a hand in that.

Red or blue, little difference now, while a plutocratic layer maintains control over politicians’ behaviour, and ordinary people continue to struggle to make ends meet.

Nobody can make me play that game anymore. Better to exercise discretion with my attention, be kind to those around me, and try and arrange this life towards the maximum level of pleasure and freedom.

 

 

While eating a fiercely spiced chicken curry with Maureen earlier this evening, we noticed that a documentary charting the life and career of Bobby Moore was on BBC2.

Watching ‘Bo66y’ was like a drive through key parts of my past. Affectionately poised between reverence and realism, the film looked at Moore’s sporting peaks in 1966 and 1970, but was equally insistent on the misfortune that dogged England’s finest defender. And full of the sense of how football – particularly the FA and West Ham United – mistreated one of the sport’s greatest proponents, by neglecting to use him as an ambassador. How his life slowly came financially and emotionally unstitched, before his death by bowel cancer. It was chokingly sad.

3 weeks earlier, I bunged in this dream snippet at the foot of Blog 33: The old England and West Ham skipper Bobby Moore was struggling for survival in a crowd. Unrecognised, in danger of being squeezed into insignificance, maybe even death.

Coincidence? Was I just remembering the past or recalling the future?

How about this? Earlier today, we popped over to Brentwood to see Eric. I asked him about who supplied the jukebox singles he used to bring home (Blog 47). He had no idea, but suddenly asked us to look in the loft to see what was up there, and to bring down any old records still hanging around. We found a pile of old 78s, from the 40s and 50s, just inside the loft hatch.

Unable to play them on his modern equipment, he suggested we take them home and were welcome to sell them. He has no idea of our finances. There are almost 100, and some exploratory checks on e-Bay indicated they might be worth a few quid, which would help with the finance situation discussed in Blog 46.

Can one write out a problem and let the subconscious point to an answer or two?

John Devane visited synchronicity corner a couple of weeks ago with his own story, linked to the death of his brother Michael in the summer. John’s wife Carol had noted that some marigolds that Michael had given to her 3 years ago – and which had never before flowered – came out a few weeks after he died. I love that one.

There’s no way to skip through this period without a swift but tasteful tribute to the delicious joy of discovering I owned a functioning reproductive system. A time when the impulse to take an evening bath peaked, and has never again been so urgent. Plenty of hot water to try and fool parents into thinking that you are seriously into cleanliness. The radio blaring away. The commitment to pleasure was soon total.

 

I can still remember the first time. Probably aged 13. Nobody had told me how this worked. So a number of gradual experiments were necessary, to be sure that these new feelings – to which I could give no name – were to be seen through to the end. I didn’t know what would happen, but it felt like the odds were in favour of a fine outcome. It felt brave to finish it off, and find out.

After that, no stopping me. I moved operations to the bedroom. Surprising in retrospect that I didn’t have to take days off school with RSI. My eyesight did worsen around this time. My parents tactfully decided that I needed a bedroom of my own shortly afterwards. Sooner or later, notes were compared with other lads. Some were more open than others. Howard Studd reported the need to bash his bishop as many as four times some nights, which was far beyond any appetite I possessed.

The discussions soon faded as most school companions seemed to incorporate masturbation into their own nightly routine. Not distorted by online porn, for which I am grateful. As normal as brushing your teeth, with little further need of comment. All girding our loins for the next step down the road. Girls.