I don't remember a lot about my beginnings.
I was born in a Leicester hospital, very premature, and not in the best of health. I'm told I was an odd colour (blue from lack of oxygen, mixed with yellow jaundice gave me a strange greenish hue) and that I was ‘wrinkled like a prune’. I had a bit of a struggle with lungs that refused to breathe and a heart that was reluctant to beat, but medical wizardry ensured I was not going to leave this world the same day I entered it.
When the panic was over I was put into an incubator to finish cooking.
Once released from hospital, my proud parents took me back to our little terraced house in what's now called the ‘inner city’, right next to the pub. My mother recalls putting me outside in the street, in my pram, for some fresh air – and when retrieving me later finding my face black with soot from the factory chimneys.
That little terraced house has long gone, it was demolished in the early '60s as part of the city’s slum clearance program.
It's usual in this kind of tale, whenever the word 'slum' is mentioned, to talk about alcoholic fathers and domestic violence. But not in this story. My old man was indeed partial to a pint or five, but the more pissed he got the dafter he became. He was my hero.
Just as well really, because he was a bit of a hard nut in those days. During WWII he was a member of the Royal Marine Special Boat Squadron (that's like the S.A.S. with boats), but I don't know much more than that. He'd never talk about his experiences, save for an occasional funny story. I do know he was one of Lord Mountbatten's personal bodyguards for a while.
By the time I reached school age, through my parents' hard work and bloody-mindedness, we had left the 'inner city' behind, and had moved to suburbia. I bloody hated it.
