When I was a child, I thought like a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I wondered how long I could keep getting away with acting like a child...
This week saw the start of the new school term in England and Wales, so let's all reach for our hymn books and sing number 26:
Autumn days when the grass is jewelled,
And the silk inside a chestnut shell,
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled,
All these things I know so well...*
Now, of course, this is all cobblers (when did you last see planes gathering to refuel in mid-air?) but it popped into my head the other day as I realised the summer was finally over. Every year, once my birthday and the August bank holiday have passed, I figure that's summer over and done with. And in the last few years, since I've been working in a job that revolves around the school terms, and where we're banned from taking leave in the last week of August and the first two weeks of September because they're our busiest times of the year, it's been even more apparent to me when autumn arrives. Which is just as well, given that the weather for the last six weeks here has resembled winter pretty much every day.
Anyway, those of you with long memories may remember, just before my life story blogging, I was talking about getting my confidence back up to start cycling again, for the first time since I was about 13. Well, I managed a little bit... and I must confess that, since then, a combination of laziness, lack of time and the atrocious weather have prevented me from doing any more. However, in the next couple of weeks I plan to change that.
You might remember there was another thing as well... a certain thing I felt God was challenging me to do, which I was slightly scared about but felt needed to be done. Well, I haven't done it yet, but I suspect that might happen in the next few weeks too. And I'm starting to feel much more confident about my ability to do it. Maybe one day I'll stop being all mysterious and actually tell you what it is...
Oh, and then there's the work stuff. I'm enjoying my job much more than usual at the minute, and coping a lot better with the busy period than I have done in the past. But I'm still not sure what I'm doing long term. I don't see myself just being an office monkey for another thirtysomething years (assuming there still is a retirement age by the time I get there) but there are so many other ideas that pop up about what I should look to do instead, and I don't seem to ever get round to putting some thought and effort into investigating whether I should take these ideas further or just let them go.
So that's where I'm at now, at the start of term. Maybe (if I remember) in about six weeks or so, when it's half term, I'll do myself a half term report card to see how I'm progressing with these things, and anything else that comes up. In the meantime, I'm off to look for silk inside chestnut shells. Laters.
And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain... er, well, I mean, this is the end of my life story so far. I'm not planning on popping my clogs for a while if I can help it, thanks.
At the time of writing, I've been 30 for nearly 23 hours. And so far... well, it's not much different from being 29. Except that everyone at work makes more of a fuss about me, but I suspect that won't last.
Interestingly, looking back over everything has made me realise some things about life now, and about who I've grown into. For all my insecurities and eccentricities, I reckon I'm actually just a normal guy. Sometimes I feel a bit unsure of myself, or a bit awkward in a situation - but doesn't everyone? There's no need and no point in beating myself up over these things; I am who I am and there's nothing wrong with me (yes, I know, those of you who know me well may take issue with that last bit, but you know what I mean). God has created me, and He's shaped me into who I am now, and I tend to find He gets these things right.
OK, so I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do with my life, there are still some ideas buzzing around that I need to try and sort out. But that's alright. I trust God has an answer, and when I need to know what it is, no doubt I'll find out. One thing, though, that has come about directly from the last few weeks' blogging, is some encouragement to do more creative stuff, particularly writing; we'll see what happens there...
And then there's Mrs Steve... I'm sure she's out there. I don't know if I've met her yet and just haven't realised, or if our paths have yet to cross. But again, I really trust that God knows what He's doing (I've yet to see much evidence to the contrary) and He has someone amazing for me (not that I necessarily deserve someone amazing, but God seems to give me a lot more than I deserve). I'm looking forward to the day when it all falls into place.
A few months back, I was stressing a bit about turning thirty. My friend Katie (who hasn't yet reached this milestone) said it was nothing to worry about; it's just like putting on a new coat. And she's right. It might be a little odd at first, but soon I'll be so comfortable in it that I won't feel strange at all. And once I'm more confident in it, I'll probably even start thinking, 'you know what? I look really good in this...' ;)
Before I resume "normal" blogging service, I just want to say thanks for reading, particularly to my "real life" friends who've read it and been very encouraging and complimentary (I guess I owe you all a pint now...). And for those of you in Wibworld, thanks for encouraging me too. Sometimes the idea of an online community seems so strange, I wonder how it could ever work; then I come back here and see it in action and think, 'oh yes, of course, like that'. It's a privilege to be part of this.
Right that's enough gushing thank yous, this isn't the Oscars. That's the first thirty years taken care of; what's next?
I will never forget my 25th birthday. A work outing had coincidentally been arranged, so we spent the evening punting on the Cam and then had a large meal where I was called upon to give a birthday speech and somehow got away with simply standing up, saying "Cheers." and sitting down again (I tend to reuse this speech wherever possible). But that's not why I remember it.
As I was sitting at work that morning, I suddenly heard God speaking to me. Now I don't usually get a really clear sense of what God's trying to say; mine tend to be a more vague feeling of, "I've just had a thought which I would never have actually had on my own, so it's probably God; I'd better look into that a bit more". And that's what this was. And God was saying, "go to Birmingham".
I had no idea why. I had a couple of friends in Birmingham, and I knew one of them was about to move out of his shared house because he was getting married. So I phoned the other mate, Mark, who I knew better, and who was still going to be living in this shared house, and we talked about it a little and he was quite excited. I talked to Mum straight away as well, and she was really encouraging and suggested I should see if I could go and visit Mark for a weekend and see how I felt about it. So a couple of weeks later, that's what I did; and I really felt I should move. When I got home, I talked it through a bit more with Mum, and in the next few days I agreed things with Mark, wrote and handed in my resignation letter to work, started looking at job possibilities in the Birmingham area, and told a few close friends that I would soon be leaving. And then we had to work out how I was going to tell Dad.
Bless him, I love my dad. But sometimes he doesn't realise that, just because something isn't what he would do or isn't done in the way he would do it, there's nothing wrong with it. We approached the subject carefully, and although he knew I was looking into moving, he didn't know I'd handed in my notice. His main concern seemed to be that I didn't already have a job lined up for when I arrived in Birmingham, and he seemed to equate this with a sense that I would simply arrive here, then phone him up asking for money every five minutes (which in fairness, had probably come about as a result of me asking him for money every five minutes). I explained that I was thinking through my options and I'd already been in touch with a few people and had a plan formulated, and after Mum spoke to him too, he came round to the idea and sent me off with his blessing. Conveniently, he also drove me and all my stuff up to my new home, which was nice.
It was sad to leave my old friends, my old church and my old youth group behind. And especially as I struggled to fit in over my first months in Birmingham. You see, a couple of weeks before I moved, Mark had started going out with Claire. And this caused a problem, in that they were due to be living in the same house, and felt that wouldn't be a good idea. So, about a week before I moved, I was asked if I'd mind moving into the house where Claire lived, two doors down from Mark's place. It didn't really make any odds to me, but it did mean that the only person I really knew around here was spending all his time with someone else, which made it hard for me to fit in. But over time, I got more settled. I started going to the same church as Mark and Claire, and got to know more people, and soon I had some really good friendships.
I was also rather fortunate to have a great selection of housemates, both when I arrived and subsequently. As well as Claire, when I arrived I was sharing with two of Mark's friends - Olly, his very laid back former uni housemate, and Tim, a guy from church who was really fun to hang out with, although I rarely got the chance (his general routine involved working in the afternoon, coming home about 10, going round to friends at about 11, and getting home in the early hours to sleep through the morning). Since then, a procession of other people from a wide variety of countries have lived here, including a French wallpaper salesman, a German scientist, a Belgian jazz-loving music teacher, a South African call centre worker, an Estonian student and a Congolese football fanatic, who sadly died from stomach cancer at a tragically young age just a couple of months after moving out. Ironically, his replacement was the only person I ever had language problems with - a trainee plumber whose Glaswegian accent was so strong that I didn't understand most of what he said aside from "chicken fajitas" and "Big Brother". And I can't guarantee I actually understood that correctly, but since he spent his evenings cooking chicken fajitas and watching Big Brother, I'm fairly confident I got it.
Work sorted itself out, after a fashion. Upon my arrival, I spent a week or so settling in, and then set about finding the temp agencies in town to ply my administrative trade. I found one who were very helpful and one who weren't. And then the next day, a Friday, I found another one who phoned me back within two hours of my visit to ask if I wanted to start work the following Monday. Does the Pope wear a funny hat? (in case you're not sure, the answer's "yes") I spent the next two years in an office with a bunch of men (and one woman), which made an interesting change from my previous job where for the most part I was the only guy in a team of women. They were very supportive, and my boss encouraged me to hang in there while he tried to find the funding to make my post permanent.
After two years hanging, the boss told me he couldn't guarantee he was going to get the funding after all, and said he would fully support me in looking for something else. Then he said that another department, who worked alongside us doing similar work but for a different client group, had a vacancy, and that I ought to apply for it. So I did. And I got the job, and I started a couple of weeks before Christmas 2005.
It hasn't all been plain sailing; those of you with long memories will remember that I started this blog during a two-month period off work with stress-induced depression. But my managers and colleagues have been incredibly supportive, and I now feel much more in control of my work. I don't necessarily intend to stay until I retire - assuming there still is a retirement age by the time I get to it - but I feel settled now. And I feel settled in Birmingham too; after about a year, I found myself thinking 'ah, here we are, home again' not when I arrived back in Cambridge, but when I got off the train at New Street. Birmingham has undergone a lot of regeneration in recent years, a lot since I've been here even, and finally seems to be shaking off the reputation of being a bit of a dump. Not saying this is all down to me being here, of course, but...
So that's the past, and now we reach the present. And we all know what comes next, eh?
After six months signing on and not really getting anywhere with looking for work - it's amazing how many jobs there were that I didn't want to do, and how few there were that I did want to do - I found myself placed onto the New Deal prgramme. This was basically a government initiative by which anyone who'd been out of work for six months or more was given an individual support person who looked for work for them and suggested potential jobs. Although it doesn't sound like much, it actually really helped. My New Deal advisor was a lady called Nancy, who was pretty much an English version of Mrs Doyle from Father Ted (smudged lipstick, outdated clothes, always asked if I wanted a cup of tea) but did a great job of tapping into the one part of my work life I'd overlooked - admin.
On my year out projects I'd had to take care of some basic office tasks, and I'd found that I really enjoyed that side of things. As full time youth work posts are hard to come by if you don't have any specific qualifications, Nancy encouraged me to look into the admin side of things more. I followed up a couple of jobs which didn't come off, and then Nancy found something pretty much ideal - a community centre looking for someone who could do a mixture of youth work and admin support. It was only a three-month contract, but they were able to offer me sessional youth work and some maternity office cover beyond that; and with some temp work for the local county council (again found by Nancy) I was soon keeping myself occupied and earning a bit of money.
Then in the autumn of 1999, the big break finally arrived. A large NHS hospital was looking for someone to work in their finance department, and were interested in taking a New Deal person. I had an interview, and within a few weeks I started work initially on a six-month contract. When the six months was up, I was asked if I would stay on for another two months due to staff shortages. Then another three months. Then there was a specific project they asked if I wanted to work on for the next four months. Then I was asked if I'd provide support for a team who had a member of staff on long-term sick. Then that member of staff left and I pretty much ended up covering his post. All in all, my six-month contract lasted two and a half years, before one of my colleagues discovered I was still not permanent, went to see the boss and said, "look, we've obviously got enough work to keep Steve here, why don't you just give him a proper job?" So the boss did, and I spent another eighteen months there.
Meanwhile, I was getting more involved in things at church, and particularly youth things. As well as The Point, I was now helping to run a youth Bible study, plus the Sunday morning youth group, who were sometimes hard to keep on topic, but at least provided many entertaining and surreal tangents (my personal favourite: "You know how, in some Middle Eastern countries, they get people trying to buy women in exchange for camels? Well, what if you actually sold your wife or daughter or whoever; how would you get the camels back to Britain? Would they have to have passports? Where would you keep them when you get home?"). I had a great bunch of mates who I loved hanging out with (and I'm not just saying that because they keep telling me they're reading this) and life was good.
But there was change afoot at home. Tina had been away to uni (mostly while I was away from home on my year out youth stuff) and was now home again, and I loved having her around. But then she met a Strange Man From The Internet, cleared off to London and got married. And as soon as she'd left home, it felt like there was suddenly a big gap. Maybe it was because of the age difference between me and her, but it always seemed that Tina was a bit of a bridge between me and my parents, particularly after I'd hit my teens. Now she'd gone, me and my folks were just rattling around in a house together, and I was starting to feel that my life was stagnating.
So, a couple of months after Tina had moved out, I hatched a plan. Dad had taken early retirement several years earlier, and Mum was due to retire in two years' time, by when I would be almost 26. If I could move out by then, I could have more independence and Mum and Dad could have the house to themselves to enjoy their retirement with. I was ready to ask around my friends and see whether there was anyone who fancied sharing a house with me. But if there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that God tends to know better than me, and usually gets His way...
By the age of 15, I was in another youth group at church, albeit with a slightly less ridiculous name than the others. This one was called '83' (because it was at the youth leaders' house, which was - yep, you guessed it - number 83) and largely consisted of people who were a bit older than me, and a lot of them were Tina's contemporaries; there never seemed to be an upper age limit, people just left when they felt it was time to move on (I'm sure there was a guy in his early 30s there). Despite being quite young and immature compared to the others, I felt really welcomed and enjoyed being part of the group. And this was where I finally made the step for myself and became a Christian.
I'd grown up with church stuff all around me, but I never really made the decision properly until one spring evening at '83' when we were listening to a tape of a preacher talking about the pain Jesus had gone through on the cross. And then he said, "now stop for a moment and imagine that it was you on the cross instead of Jesus", and it hit me - if Jesus could give up everything for me, I should do the same for him. So I prayed and prayed and wept buckets, and although I didn't have one of those magical "woo! Everything in my life has changed now!" kind of things, I definitely knew that God was real and He was with me and loved me. Even if I was a lazy slacker (and I was, as shall become apparent shortly).
Due to my birthday falling so late in the British academic year, I'd already taken my GCSEs and got my results back before my 16th birthday. Considering that I had long since given up on concepts such as homework and revision, I was quite pleasantly surprised to come out with an A, four Cs and two Ds. So what was I going to do now?
Well, forward thinking was never a strong point in my life, and rather petulantly I finished my statutory school years with a sense of, "I've done twelve years of this crap, I don't want to do another two and then possibly another three after that". Even though I seemed to be fairly bright, I just never felt that school worked for me. So, while my sister had gone on to sixth form, and would later go to uni, I just wanted to get out of classrooms and into the real world. Then, once I got into the real world, I realised I didn't really want to be there either.
The next few years were a bit of a mess, all told. I thought I wanted to work in a shop, so the day after I turned 16 I started on a YTS-type scheme working in a large and well-known clothes shop (without giving too much away, it has an island and a river in its name). However my expectations were quite different from the realities of shopwork, and it was quite clear within a few weeks that I wasn't enjoying it and subsequently wasn't putting my all into things. Of course, it didn't help that the training arrangement of my contract meant that I was working for about £1 an hour, which even in 1994 was terrible. So my boss and I had a chat, and my two-year training programme was terminated by mutual consent after seven weeks.
With no idea what I wanted to do, I managed to stay at home doing nothing for a couple of months, until Mum told me that I couldn't carry on doing that. So I ended up doing some voluntary stuff at the Romsey Mill, a Christian-run community and youth centre in town. I was familiar with the place already - I'd been to a couple of holiday clubs there as a kid, and had then tagged along with Tina and her mates when they went to youth celebration events - and spent about six months or so running the coffee bar on Wednesday mornings, which largely consisted of setting up the coffee machine, then standing around all morning eating chocolate. Oh, and serving and chatting to the occasional customer (mainly the Mill staff and a few single mums coming to a weekly group). And then packing up the coffee machine again. I was involved on and off at Romsey Mill over the next few years, becoming a holiday club leader and then helping to run a lads' group on Monday nights (when I say "helping to run", what I really mean is "helping to facilitate a giant basketball match each week").
Meanwhile, I was also getting more heavily involved in things at church. The '83' leaders had set up a coffee bar / youth club type thing at church called The Pickled Parrot (it might be best not to ask), and at some point this mutated into another similar youth club type thing called The Point (for some time afterwards, if anyone was heard to ask "what's the point?", you could guarantee someone would start quoting our promotional blurb - "The Point is a new youth club on Friday nights..." Yeah, very funny...). Despite being just a teen myself, I got involved in the teams running these clubs, and soon realised I really enjoyed working with teenagers and youth. And what's more, it felt like a real gift from God. 'Hmmm', I started to think, 'I wonder if there's some way I could do this for a job...?'
Well, somehow I ended up getting onto a sixth form course the following September. It was an NVQ course in Health and Social Care, and the college had suggested there would be stuff in it which would be useful to me in wanting to pursue youth work. After a year, I hadn't found any of this useful stuff; the whole course was pretty much geared to training you to become either a nurse or a social worker, and neither of those were my forte. Plus, the old "can't be arsed with homework" thing came up again. Needless to say, I dropped out at the end of the first year (reportedly, so did three quarters of the other people on the course, which may mean it wasn't just down to my laziness).
So what next? I went on a year out type project with a big Christian missionary charity which involved me spending a year doing youth work in Staffordshire. Despite some challenges, particularly with adapting to being away from home, I loved it; so much so that I asked if I could do another year, and they said yes. This time I was sent a bit further north, to Rochdale on the outskirts of Manchester, and I hated it. What was so different? In a nutshell, the people I was working alongside. The Staffordshire team had been really supportive and encouraging and had helped me to grow and mature and flourish. In Rochdale, I never felt accepted by the team; I became quiet and withdrawn, to the point of extreme introversion. Now, I'll often be quite quiet when I first meet people, and allow more of my personality to come out once I feel more comfortable around them, but here I never really reached that point. Between one thing and another, I prayed and really felt that I should leave, so after four months I went home. And I really truly believe it was the best decision I ever made.
Not that it felt that way at the time, however. I was now unemployed, with no qualifications beyond my GCSEs, no idea what I wanted to do, and a CV which showed me having left early from the last three major things I'd done. I had to trust God that something would come up... but what?
Around the age of ten, I had to make the decision about which secondary school I wanted to go to. My parents were keen to let me choose the school I wanted; rather than the local school in another village a few miles away (which a good 90% of my classmates went to), I wanted to go to a school on the other side of Cambridge. Why? Quite simple really - Tina had originally gone to the nearby school but had a difficult time there; when she moved to the other school, she was much happier. So right from the start, I wanted to go there instead. It was an inter-church school (all flavours of Christian welcome), but until a few years earlier it had been a Catholic school, and many Catholic families elected to send their kids there - meaning a large proportion of my classmates had Irish or Italian names.
From my village, there were only a handful of us going to this school, and in my year group there were just two of us - me and Phil. I only met Phil for the first time a couple of months before we finished junior school (his father was in the armed forces - well, not all of them obviously, I just can't remember which specific one it was - and had been posted in the USA for the last few years, meaning that Phil had a strong American accent which gradually wore off over the next few years), but we soon became friends. Well, you do, don't you, when you're the only two kids in your year going from your junior school to the same secondary school?
In the next few years, my close friendships changed a few times. At school I eventually fell in with a little crowd - Richard, Pat, Rupert and me, plus a handful of others - who I loved hanging out with, although we never really did anything other than wander around together. Outside school I used to spend a bit of time round at Phil's house, usually playing Super Mario Brothers (the only computer game I've ever been much good at), and then in later years I became good mates with Ronan and Daniel, two brothers who lived round the corner from me and also both went to the same school as me, albeit in younger year groups. Typically our main times hanging out revolved around music - on a Wednesday evening we'd trawl through the new issues of NME and Melody Maker reading about bands we'd never heard of before (some of whom, of course, went on to become very successful and thus suddenly be slated by NME and Melody Maker for, y'know, actually having sold some records) and on a Saturday morning we'd watch The Chart Show and bemoan all the rubbish early/mid-90s Eurocheese that got into the top ten while all the trendy NME bands were struggling to sell four copies to anyone.
Yes, music was my first love, and it will be my last... It was in my early teens that I really fell in love with music. Having an older sister meant I was exposed to pop at an early age, and as a result I ended up liking most of the same music she did (mainly the 80s electropop stuff - Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, New Order, Depeche Mode, that kind of thing). There were always exceptions though. I hope I won't be embarrassing Tina too much by saying that she had a Bananarama single. I hated it, but sadly my attempts to hide / destroy it were unsuccessful. That said, I was rather sucked in by most of the late-80s naffness created by messrs Stock, Aitken and Waterman; I have subsequently repented.
And speaking of repentance... I'd kind of wandered away from church around the age of 8, largely because I was given the option of not going to church and I liked the idea of watching cartoons while eating chocolate at Nanna K's place instead. When I was 10, Mum mentioned to me one day that there was a new Sunday morning group for my age at church which was supposed to be really good, so I agreed to give it a try. And I quite liked it, so I went back... And before I knew it, I was going to church most weeks, going to various youth groups with ridiculous names (Gabberdine Swine, anybody?!) and generally back in the whole church loop. And then... well, then things got really really really interesting.
So, a few months before my fifth birthday, I started school. I was always a pretty bright kid - ahead of the average for my age in reading, writing and maths - and soon settled in well. The school was in our village, and before too long I had a little routine up and running. I walked to school in the morning, often calling in on the way at Nanna and Grandad P's house (they'd now moved to the village, which was just as well, because calling via Northampton on the way would have added over 100 miles to my walk) where Grandad would comb my hair so I looked smart, and then I'd mess it up again as soon as I was out of the back gate. Mum was now working part time, so after school I'd go to Nanna K's house and be plied with chocolate and crisps (and, later in my childhood, money which I mostly spent on more chocolate and crisps) until she got home.
And the stuff in between? Well, despite my apparent intelligence, I never really became an A grade student. A lot of the time I just couldn't be bothered, and coasted a bit, relying on the fact that I was fairly bright and could blag my way a little. That's not to say that I didn't have a few blond moments though (actually, I was quite blond in my early years, but my hair turned brown around the age of five or six and has stayed that way ever since - but I digress...). One famous moment came when an author visited the school to read us parts of his new book and then sign copies of it, leading to this exchange:
Him: (pen in hand, ready to sign book) "And what's your name?"
Me: "Steven."
Him: "Is that with a 'V' or with a 'PH'?"
Me: (unaware there is more than one spelling of Steven and assuming he's just totally thick) "No, it's with an 'S'..."
Ah yes, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra: "Embarassing childhood moments, I've had a few; but then again, too few to mention". In no particular order, various stories of my formative years:
- playing a game in the back garden with Tina, in which we've turned our parents' coffe table upside down and are using it as a boat (I still can't believe they actually let us do that). Tina turns to me and says, "Oh no, we're sinking. Fetch the oars!" Having no idea what oars are, I promptly walk off into the house and return two minutes later with... the horse from Tina's Sindy doll set. He wasn't much help in getting us back to dry land.
- the day Mum broke her leg while walking to the postbox round the corner from our house. Thankfully a family friend (a lorry driver making one of his occasional mid-route "mystery" detours via our house for a cup of tea) arrived and phoned for an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, I tried to think of something nice to do for Mum and, figuring she might get bored while she was waiting at the hospital, decided to find a book for her to read. So my poor mother, already suffering from a broken leg, was carted off to hospital incongruously clutching a Rupert the Bear annual, which I suspect didn't take her mind off things as much as I had expected.
- a pre-five-years-old story, I think, but still quite a fun one. Me, Mum and Tina were at church one Sunday morning (Dad was playing golf, usually), and the vicar announced we would spend a few moments saying sorry to God for the things we'd done wrong. At which point I piped up, "well, I haven't done anything wrong", much to my mother's embarrassment. Thankfully, the vicar saw the funny side and amended his words: "OK, all but one of us are going to say sorry..."
- as we were a caravaning family, there are a couple of great stories from there too, such as the time around the age of three when I thought I was Superman and jumped off the top bunk bed. Reader, you will be as surprised as I was to discover that I couldn't fly; a scar across the bridge of my nose acts as a constant reminder that it's less painful and more successful to use a plane if I want to fly from one place to another.
- a later childhood caravaning story comes from our usual family tradition of finding a nearby fish and chip shop for dinner once we'd arrived at our location. One night, my parents suggested I might want to try something different instead of my usual sausage and chips. So I looked at the menu and picked scampi, having no idea what it actually was. It went on to become one of my favourite meals (much to Mum and Dad's consternation, as it was somewhat more expensive than a sausage), but my delicate palate wasn't yet ready for it; in the early hours of the morning, I woke up, groaned a bit, and promptly threw up. Which was bad news for my sister, who was sleeping in the bunk below and got an unpleasant wake-up call, and also for Mum and Dad who had to clean it all up. Meanwhile I went back to sleep, seemingly oblivious to the chaos and unpleasantness I had caused - even when we drove past the chip shop the next day and I commented on what lovely fish and chips we'd had, while everyone else in the car maintained an irritated silence...
I could go on, but I can't actually remember any other great stories (none that I want to share with the worldwide web, anyway). The rest of my childhood is a bit of a blur of family holidays (normally to a hotel on the Isle of Wight, where I learned to swim and once entered a fancy dress contest as John MacEnroe), weekends away in the caravan (I never really took to caravaning as much as the rest of the family did; I didn't really want to spend my weekends away from my friends sitting in a box in the middle of a field in perpetual drizzle), and hanging out with my friends. I got on fairly well with everyone at school and didn't really have any enemies as such, but I did have a few close friends - James, Paul, the unfeasibly tall Eddie, and Michael and Tony, two "twins" who bore no resemblance whatsoever to each other except they had identical haircuts (Mum always suspected one or both of them had been adopted, and I suspect she may have been right). It was with James and the "twins" that I invented a genius game one break time - genius in the sense that only an eight-year-old can come up with. The rules were simple - player one gets on player two's shoulders, and player two throws player one onto the ground. This provided huge entertainment for us for a whole fifteen minutes, until the very moment the whistle blew for the end of break, which coincided with the very moment I smacked my shoulder into the ground and broke my collar bone. The following morning I turned up at school with my arm in a sling, and Mum spoke to Michael, who was somewhat terrified that he would be in serious trouble; thankfully, Mum understood that Boys Do Stupid Things and just told him that she didn't blame him, I was just as responsible, and we probably shouldn't play this game ever again, advice which we duly took.
All in all, then, a pretty average childhood, and quite a nice one at that. No doubt my sister will be along in due course to correct all the bits I got wrong. And then I'll be back to go through the secondary school years...
If I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, gentle readers, I must confess that I don't remember a huge amount from the day I was born. However, I have it on good authority that, shortly before lunchtime on the 28th August 1978, I finally decided it was time to say hello to everyone. Although it took me a long while before I could actually say anything, of course. In the meantime, I waited for my dad to pick up his new son for the first time; and when he did, I proceeded to perfectly aim my first wee straight into his trouser pocket, rendering most of the money in his wallet unusable. I think this was the last time he allowed me to p*ss away his money...
Anyway, within a few days we were all back home (a modest but nice terraced house in a still-pretty-new village near Cambridge) and I was getting to know these strange people called my family - two big people called Mummy and Daddy, and a rather smaller person called Tina. Mummy seemed to spend all her time at home getting things for me; Daddy put on a shirt and tie (and trousers) most days and went out in the morning, only to come back just in time for tea; and Tina went to something called "school" which didn't sound very exciting.
Over the next few years, I got to meet some more of the family. There were two people called Nanna and Grandad, who lived in a flat in the village, and another two people called Nanna and Grandad who lived in Northampton and who we'd occasionally go and see. Sadly, Grandad K (dad's dad, in the village) passed away not long before my first birthday, and I have no memory of him at all. But I always liked visiting Nanna K (she had lots of chocolate) and she'd indulge my, already somewhat active imagination - leading to the often repeated family story where I pretended to drive Nanna around in a car and, trying to remember what I'd seen dad doing while driving, proceeded to shout at a passing imaginary motorist, "OI!! Get over, you pillock!!!" Luckily, Nanna found this kind of funny.
Going to see Nanna and Grandad P was also lots of fun, although occasionally a bit traumatic. At the age of about two, I was sat in my buggy being pushed through Wicksteed Park in Northampton on a family day out; Nanna and Grandad had given me some bread to throw to the ducks and swans. Sadly, I only had stumpy little arms at the time, and I threw like a girl. As a result, nearly all of the bread ended up in my lap. Still, the geese weren't fussy, and went for the bread anyway - much to my horror, as I found myself being attacked from all sides by snapping beaks. I can look back and laugh now, although that's mainly due to many hours of expensive therapy sessions...
All in all, I had a very happy childhood. I went to play group with mum, which I really enjoyed; I got to make friends and climb on climbing frames and paint with string and bits of potatoes, while mum got to sit and watch me, which I'm sure was thrilling for her. And then, one day I wasn't going to play group anymore. Now I got to go to school, like Tina did. It was the end of the start of my life... (ooh, that sounds a bit pretensious, doesn't it? Good, though. I think I'll keep it in.)
From now until my birthday at the end of the month, my regular blogging is suspended (stop cheering at the back there). Instead, I'll be writing a brief life story, based around developments in my life at seven different ages - 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and finally 30.
I know, I know, 30's barely any age to be writing an autobiography. Then again, Charlotte Church (or possibly her ghost writer) has already written two, and she's only just out of her teens. But this idea has been floating around in my head for the best part of a year, and I couldn't resist having a crack at it.
The plan is that there'll be about two updates a week, with the final one on my birthday itself, the 28th. So if you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin...
Right, are we all here? Do pay attention, we've got a lot to get through...
Busy day at work - deadlines to be met and the like. With the nature of my job being tied in with school terms, and the school holidays being in full swing by now, you could be mistaken for thinking it should all be quiet in the office. Indeed, you would be mistaken; I've come to the conclusion that there really isn't a quiet time of year for us, there's always something going on. It's especially great when you talk to the contact people we liaise with at the schools, and they say something like, "hope you enjoy your break over the summer", and I just think, "we don't really get one, but never mind; speak to you again in six weeks when you're all relaxed and I'm still completely frazzled".
Other things to report? A couple of challenges coming up for me in the next couple of weeks. The first is learning to ride a bike all over again. You know how they say you never forget how to ride a bike? Well, "they" (whoever they are) are liars. I learned to ride a bike when I was eight, and proceeded to spend the next five years zipping about the village, becoming almost inseparable from my two-wheeled transport. Then I went on holiday for a few weeks and when I got home, I was so wobbly on the bike that I never dared get on it again. However, owing to a combination of necessity, convenience and encouragement, I'm getting back in the saddle - ba-doom tish - tomorrow morning, with the help of two housemates (one providing essential moral support, the other providing the even more essential facility of an actual bike). I'm actually not too apprehensive about it now, but only time will tell...
As for my other, entirely unrelated challenge - well, I'd rather not say too much just yet, but I think God's been pushing me the last few weeks about something, and I just have to go for it... but it'll be a week or so before I get to do it... which is long enough for me to either a) brick it, convince myself God was talking to someone else and I just overheard Him, and run away, or b) think it all through logically, reassure myself it'll all be OK, and get ready to do what I've got to do...
However, if you're hoping for updates on any of these situations, you might have to wait a while. I have something specific planned for the next few weeks, which will result in me not posting the usual gibberish for a while. Instead, some unusual gibberish. I'll explain all tomorrow, promise.
And finally... I've been wanting to post this for some time (and now I've learned how to do all that clever jiggery-pokery with YouTube, I can). If you haven't yet discovered Flight Of The Conchords then you're missing out. Their TV show and album are both well worth investigating, particularly if this makes you laugh as much as it makes me laugh (that is, rather a lot):
30 Going On 13 
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