Welcome once again. I do hope you are enjoying this as much as I am. The previous chapter two took me to the age of about 9. School was not going to well; my acquaintances were the seediest of characters. Together we decided on a competition to see who could get caned the most in one week. I mean of course corporal punishment not drinking to excess, falling in the gutter and getting puked over by your mates. Guess who won? When I am challenged and I apply myself you had better give me space. Sixteen times, sixteen thwacks across the hand, it is still a record. Mr Harris the headmaster asked for a meeting with my parents. My Nan went along with me as Mum was unwell and Dad was at work. I can still see Mr Harris’s red face when I informed him that it had all been a youthful competition.
Not amused I was on report and for a while I applied myself to schoolwork and received many reward cards. I still have them somewhere in the loft. One in particular I liked. It was for art, I was good at art. The card depicts a pre-historic hunter carrying a massive stag across his hairy shoulders. He is walking down a fern covered hill towards a smoky settlement and looking back at me. His face shows a serene contentment.
Not long after this the family moved to Oldbury near Birmingham. My grandparents were moving here from Sicily. Also my father’s sisters lived there. Two new build houses were bought and I was uprooted. An odd sensation and one you have no option but to come to terms with. This was a difficult time for me. I was the alien in the community, the unknown entity. The southerner with a foreign name. I remember some good times but most were hard. I had many fights. I immersed myself in my schoolwork.
Most notable memories are as follows. Opposite us was a row of redbrick terraced houses. One of the occupants, a man of about 20 years of age had a massive cupboard full of comics. Batman, Superboy, Superman, The Green Hornet, Fantastic Four and many others. I would read them in my bedroom under the covers with a torch for light. This was the very beginning of a hunger that I still have today. I loved reading. I loved it that the writers imagination was released in all its glory in the story lines, the artwork and the characters. What a marvelous time that was. I felt cosy and safe reading these adventurers escapades from the comfort and safety of my bed. Food for my imagination. I sit here and wonder where those comics are now? If my father had his way they would be soot. I can smell the paper and see the coloured covers. The stories however are simply ghosts.
There was a canal, I used to walk there and watch the anglers. There was a sweet factory where we used to get bags of damaged éclairs really cheap. There was an old cinema where they held Saturday morning pictures. Flash Gordon, Rocketeer and Abbot & Costello a feast of black and white escapism. I went to my first ever football match. I made a papier-mâché Donald Duck puppet for a school project. I was made a prefect. It lasted two days. I was caught kicking a boy outside the Headmaster’s office and lost my badge. I never told Mum and Dad they just didn’t notice I was not wearing it. I passed my 11 plus with the highest mark in the school. One of my Aunties died from a botched abortion, my Grandfather died of a brain haemorrhage on his way to his allotment. I was bitten on the leg and pulled to the ground by an Alsatian. The owners were shitting themselves thinking we would push to have the dog shot. I began to sound like a local. I was offered a place at Oldbury technical college. More fights but I was tall and strong and I always went for the biggest in the group. In the end they could only get the better of me by ganging up. I did not have many friends, it was a hard time. I was the only new boy who did not get de-bagged and tied to the tree. I wonder why? even today. It was odd that most of the trouble makers were small and blonde haired. I attended the college for six months when it was decided that we would move back to Battersea. Mum missed the neighbours. Dad missed his mates. I missed out on a good school. I was enjoying the classes and lessons because I had not distractions. All that would change when Battersea once again entered my life.
The collection is not just physical. It is not necessarily made up of artefact's or things. It can be just memories, snippets of life that never leave you. They well up from time to time wafting on the odour from a new mown field, cooked bacon or a bakery. Drifting in like storms when the mood takes them, gathering like rooks when some action or occurrence throws the cinematic imagery that is mind into recall. A sound, a look, a picture, a book. A dream, a taste, a loss, a face. Some comment, a friend, a film, or an end. All things conspire to bring you back to the person you were, just then. When something mattered enough for it to be tagged. Or some trauma attached itself to an event. Your first kiss, the day you broke an arm, the loss of a pet, Father Christmas leaving that big sack at the bottom of your bed and in the morning you find the three tone plastic trumpet that was your first ever musical instrument. In fact up in the loft I still have a picture of me making a racket with it.
More to follow soon I am now 12 years old.
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