Episode 9: Cycle of Despair

So your bike's boring the pants off you, and you're tired, yet secretly excited, by talk of Coupe de Menthes and Ten-Gear racers as you cower in one of the semi-safe areas of the playground with your 'Trump Cards' willing yourself invisible. In the end, these two wheel contraptions that won the Japanese the war or whatever become a kind of obsession. You know you'll never get one. And someone will nick it if you do, but you can't be seen dead in public again with your Noddy trike. Raleigh convertibles may be beyond your grasp, but there's always the working class alternative. Destroy your own safe and sensible big wheeler. Wrench off the handlebars and stick on a pair of 'cowhorns'. Tear away the mud-guard and flaunt your dirty back tyre, as brazen as a monkey's anus. You've got yourself a 'Tracker'. Just like safety-pinning your flares or pulling a bit harder on that ripped up school jersey....Who am I kidding? The old jalopy never adapted to its new image. The cowhorns made no hands steering an even more impossible dream and no mud guards meant a sack of dust and the dirtiest rear end in town. But customising, once grasped, is a principle you never lose sight of.


My Bloody Valentine

Even the reproach was considerate:

"...You're not supposed to write your name in it, Leonard!"

The card fell in the drawer and the class howled aloud with laughter. Oh, I could have died! But in truth, it wasn't the first time I'd let my affections get the better of me. At 6 or 7 years old, I'd let the 5 or 6 girls in my class know my feelings through a series of Valentines handed out as they passed my desk. I noted with pleasure the smiles and waves from those I was acquainted with, but Liz Willbery took hers straight to Mrs Wallis.

"Leonard, can you come to the front, please?"

Speaking quietly, with the class supposedly working, but straining desperately to hear the conversation, our overseer began, "It's nice  we're all friends here..." in a manner hinting she could imagine a less appealing version of my 'friendship' come puberty. Luckily, a veil descends over the rest of the discourse, but I recall a feeling of pride at having been martyred on the altar of cupid. And was it really any surprise I should offer a Valentine to our Geography teacher five years afterwards..?

Brother where art thou?

The essence of an only child is isolation. They tend to be either ridiculously introspective or idiotically social in order to hide their crippling urge to be stand-offish. Leaving the room suddenly, having won everybody over with their bonhomie, because fundamentally they feel the best conversations are had in your own head.

And they invent great toys, or at least games, which involve a multitude of characters, but can be played by only one, though occasionally they might ask others to join in, recognising swiftly the futility of trying to find others with similar outlooks.

My personal preference was for sporting contests using plastic figures from box-games such as 'Subbuteo' or 'Soccer Strat'. One way of idling away the hours was to balance four such markers, bearing the name of a favourite performer from the world of track and field, at the top edge of an angled picnic table. Dropping a dice near the base, the vibrations would send the figures hurtling down the surface, and in a matter of seconds, gold silver and bronze positions, or more likely, progression to the next round, would be decided.

Christmases were more social. It was games all the way. The oh-so generous 'let your parents open their amateurishly wrapped gifts first so that you can have an orgy of frenzied paper tearing all to yourself at the end' policy usually paid dividends. Such decadence rolled round only once a year. Who wanted your pleasure or disappointment interrupted with rounds of "Aren't you lucky??!!" or "That's nice!" Or even worse, having to conjure up an expression of undeserving gratitude. Then 'Let the games commence...!' as your parents fucked off to the drinks cabinet and you got stuck into your presents with your cousins in your pyjamas, or got stuck into your cousins in your pyjamas with their presents. Rebound, Crossfire, 'Olympics' (naturally) Donkey Derby (with Sid James:) These were our creme de menthe and egg nog., though you could consider yourself lucky to have struck gold in the December 25th exchanges.. Taken in by Palitoy and Ronco again! The instructions and intricate board game arrangements were the inevitable mid-day, lunch due, losing interest corollary to the initial rush. Never fear. Days and weeks of softly-softly, "My games's brilliant but..." bargaining lay ahead of you. The ones you played forever might arrive months down the line with fading elastic and lost balls you'd adapt the rules for, or if you could be bothered, write to the manufacturers to obtain anew.