A world coloured pink: Blog two: In the beginning You may have noticed this chapter is called ‘in the beginning’, I thought this would be best, since we have already had the start, one should never have too many starts in a piece of writing, or indeed in any thing. If the best selling book of all time ‘The Holy Bible’ starts with ‘in the beginning’, then thats even more reason for me to start my first chapter in this way, if something works then stick with it I say, no point in inventing a second wheel, tried and tested options are always in my opinion the best way forward. So where was I? oh yes, in the beginning (of me) I was born, like so many other human beings before my time and since my beginning. This may not seem like much to some, but to me it was a really big deal, this was the first day of me becoming me, separate from my mother, becoming a proper person with my own identity, although this is debatable as babies mostly look all the same. This was the first time I breathed the breath that God first placed in Adam in the beginning, by myself. My birth took place in the town of Wisbech, then I went to live in March in the month of October, yes get your head round that one. March being in Cambridgeshire makes me feel so posh, however March is not at all like Cambridge, it is a rural community in what is very flat land claimed from the sea, this part of England is known as ‘the fens’, which in turn makes me a Fen man. This part of East Anglia is so flat that people can cycle for weeks with only a half hour break, you can stand in one town and see someone in a nearby village having a cup of tea in their living room watching coronation street. Seriously this land is flat, I never understood why I wasn’t known as a ‘flat man’ instead of a ‘fen man’. So I progressed from being a babe in arms to a toddler as one does. I engaged in many activities that toddlers do, such as taking apart people’s gas fires, and laying a nice new sand covered driveway for my mothers friend , I have been told by my family that I was a little handful and very strong willed, something which I feel has stayed with me as an adult, and which has served me both positively and negatively, but more on that later. Those first few years were spent at the family home with my parents, 2 older sisters and my brother, they are all older than me, the closest sibling to me in age, is a ten year age gap, this meant my mother was already into her thirties by now and my father was 44, back then they were considered to be older parents, today they would probably be considered to be young parents and probably first time buyers, if they were fortunate enough to have enough money for a deposit and be in paid employment. Things have changed dramatically since I was born in the 1980’s, most of which I fear is not for the best, pressures are now higher and in an ever more expensive climate, people are I fear not as carefree as they used to be, I know, not all people were like that, but I think most older people will tell you that things are now not the same. The world was bigger in the 1980’s, well everywhere was big actually as I was only a small puny kid, no seriously, in those days not everyone went abroad for holidays, they went for long haul trips to Skegness or Wales in a portable home known only as a caravan or heaven forbid a tent, and you had to send letters and wait ages for a reply, there was no mobile phone, email or social networking. Friends met up once in a while and actually had things to say to one another as they didn’t have the advantage of being able to read ones news feed via social networking, people did not all stare at mobile phones and tablets at gatherings, they actually had real time human interaction, it was truly an amazing time. My childhood was fun in the 80’s and early parts of the 90’s, we were tough then, we could climb trees, ride bikes and actually use playground equipment without dying or even having the fear of death, we were almost invincible back then. Kids could even drink from the same cups as each other and not contract #life threatening diseases, parents could discipline their own children without the fear of going to prison, and kids actually grew in to decent adults who had a sense of what was right and wrong and how to treat other people, we never had anything like the London riots which we have seen in recent years. So I feel very fortunate to have been born in the 1980’s, I think this is probably the last generation of kids who could entertain themselves and be allowed to roam the outside world without much fear, I’m not saying bad things did not happen, but we certainly were not a suspicious people like we are now, we were loved and we knew how to love back. We lived in March until I was five years old, my first infant school was in March, I was only there for about one term before we moved as a family, all I remember about it was that it was very regimented and the environment did not seem to want to welcome small children, and the class teacher appeared to despise them, I hated going and even then I called it ‘the prison school’ to my parents. I remember that it had pegs where I was supposed to hang my coat and bag, I always hung it on someone’s else’s coat peg, as I could not read, which was not unusual for a five year old and definitely is not unusual today, the teachers would come down hard on me for this, they were such caring reception teachers. They would show me my peg and after break I would hang it on a completely different one, looking back this must have been frustrating for them, and looking back this was probably one of the first tale tale signs that all was not how it should be with me, the first signs that I had some kind of difficulty. I remember even the kids looked at me as if I was some kind of buffoon, a look which I am now all too familiar with and have to deal with on a regular basis. So when my parents announced that we were moving to Leicestershire in the midlands and that I was going to a much nicer school, I was of course absolutely gutted, as I had really clicked with my teachers and had made tons of friends, not. I was delighted and could not wait to get out of there, and I was excited by the move, we were moving near some relatives, who were half siblings from my fathers previous marriage, again they were much older than me and older than the siblings I grew up with, in fact they were already married and had families of their own, so I was in fact someone’s uncle whilst I lay inside my mothers womb. We made the move and all went smoothly, we stopped for a few short days at one of my half sisters, until the house was ready to move into, my half sister had no children then, but she was married, I liked her husband as he rode a motorbike, when your a small boy people who ride motorbikes are heroes. We moved into the new house which was in the centre of the village which is called Earl Shilton, it is now today a town as it has grown a lot since those days in population, and has obtained a parish council. Our new house was a three bedroom terrace house, it was quite old and the name of my road was wood street, it didn’t have one building made from wood! The new house was literally just down the road from my new infant school ‘Wood street infant school’, this was a fairy old school, it looked like something from a Victorian period film, and some of the teachers looked like they were also from the Victorian era, as I remember there being at least two old teachers and I was unfortunate enough to have one as my teacher, I remember she was a short tempered woman with not a lot of patience, she was totally old school, I don,t know if smacking had been scrapped by then, but she definitely still used it at times, only a tap I may add, but I tell you what, it worked, I never lied to her again or threw great big cushions at the other children ever again! The kids though were much nicer than that first school I went to in March, some of them I still know now as adults, mostly on Facebook, probably so we can just be nosey with each other. As time went on and I moved up the year groups, I remember the lessons getting harder, I can still recall lessons where he had to copy writings down off the flip board as a class, you had to keep up as the teacher would flip over the page and start writing something else, I would always be two to three pages behind, I would nervously ask the other kids if I could copy their’s, but they would either not help or would already be on a new page themselves, and so what I needed to see was already on a different page. As well as this we would have to fill in missing words, I just could not do this, I wasn’t lazy, I wasn’t messing around either, I just could not for the #life of me do this. I remember just feeling very sad and very alone, I felt like I was odd, why couldn’t I do this? Why is everyone else able to do this? I would have to also contend with the teacher not being pleased with the fact I had only wrote my name and date, in those days teachers told you what they thought in front of everyone, I’m sure this still goes on today, in fact I know it does as I have worked in schools in the past few years and have witnessed just this, and I have seen children have their work ripped up in front of the class, along with their self esteem. I also remember the reading books being hard, we would have to practice reading them at home, along with spellings which were equally as hard, my mum had to bribe me with stickers for my sticker book, I never wanted to practice as it was so hard, I just could not hold anything in my head for more than a few seconds, so even if I did finally understand something, it was gone just as I got it, then I would have to learn again, this went on and on. This just made teachers really frustrated and angry, but I really couldn’t help it, I never asked to be this way, and I certainly never asked to be at school, I now just wanted to stay home, I hated school, teachers and the majority of the kids. My mother would walk me to school and I would never want her to leave, she would of course finally get me to go in, once in, I would go straight to the window to wave to her, but really it was to cry and mouth my begging for her to take me back home, I was safe at home, accepted and not hassled, I think this may be one of the reasons why I am such a home bird even now as an adult, it has always been a place of rest and refuge for me, a place where I can be who I am, and not what others want me to be, I could not be a smart kid. This may all sound like I had a terrible #life and that I could do nothing, well that’s not true I was good at lots of things like playing imaginary games, caring for animals, remembering movies and cartoons (I now know this is because I best learn in picture form) I was also pretty good at video games, I just wasn’t particularly academic and I did not thrive in a class room situation. Many boys are not suited to the class room environment, many professionals have argued for a long time now that the formal educational setting of a classroom is better suited to girls, and some argue that our educational system in the UK is feminised. I’m not sure about this, but I do know I needed specialist teaching and from teachers who could teach me, and understand where I was coming from.