In Bildeston for a few days, visiting Mum and Dad. I write this entry on my new iBook, connected to the parental wireless broadband, while sat up in bed. Though the bed is different, this is the exact same space I did most of my sleeping as a child, on a bunk bed with Tom. The room is now Mum’s quiltmaking studio, and various elaborate quilts crafted in her Cathedral Window style now calm the noisy walls of boyhood past. Though I’m very much a non-adult, I prefer the room as it is now; a tasteful and tranquil space for Mum’s creativity. She gets things done here, makes things, shares the knowledge. Her new book is Stash-Buster Quilts: 14 Time-Saving Designs to Use Up Fabric Scraps.
People are meant to be nostalgic for their childhoods, but for me it’s like feeling nostalgic for a directionless early draft, when you have a more polished version to hand. I wince at the thought of some of the posters that were on these walls before: indie bands and film stars I didn’t really feel strongly for at the time, but thought I probably should. Trying to do what teenagers are meant to do. Keeping up and trying to stay in touch.
I wouldn’t go as far to say my childhood was a ‘forgotten boredom’ like Mr Larkin’s, nor was it the happiest days of my life. It passed, I drifted through. Took a bit longer than I’d have liked, but otherwise I can’t moan. Searching for a memory of the village, all I can recall right now is the locals kids suddenly deciding to play Knock Down Ginger on me whenever they passed the front door. I was about 15. They started it completely out of the blue. Most times, they just knocked and ran. It went on for months. But I vividly remember the one time my mother answered the door too quickly, unknowingly catching them out. She presumed they were friends. I was sitting inside, knowing already what was going on.
“Oh!” I heard them say on seeing the door open too fast for them to escape. “Um, is Dickon in?”
“I’ll just get him. Dickon, it’s some friends…”
Of course, as soon as my mother’s head was turned, they ran off giggling into the night.
I was just there. Some kids are monsters, but others are only slightly cruel, and need people like me to be slightly cruel to. It wasn’t like I was being physically beaten up on a regular basis. That happened once or twice in my entire schoolhood, but even then it was hardly the stuff of tortured genius-style biographies. The schools weren’t rough, the village was hardly a ghetto. I was slightly targeted, by minor bullies.
It was annoying to be on the receiving end of cheap unkindness, but at least it prepared me for my life now. I rarely walk along Archway Road without attracting a shouting from a passing vehicle. It happened today, setting off to catch the train. What did they say? Oh, it was “NICE TROUSERS!” in a sarcastic yawp, or something similar. Just another minor attack for a minor eccentric. But thanks to a lifetime in the trenches converting my ridiculousness from accidental to deliberate, I don’t get upset anymore. I smirk back, or blow kisses.
Even my friends do it. Ms Claudia texted me the other day, presumably from a passing bus:
“JUST SAW YOU RUNNING ACROSS THE ARCHWAY ROAD. YOU DID LOOK FUNNY!”
And I was happy about that. The teenage me would have been mortified.
Like most things, childhood wasn’t really my cup of tea. It was very gracious of me to give it a go, though. I’ll try anything once.
