I was born in a council house with no running water at four o'clock on a Friday morning. I was a lover, but not a giver. I loved raw turnips, preferably unwashed and fresh from the field. But I never, ever gave a slice to anybody. Not even Megan Thoday.
I could read when I was three. I read KING SUFFERING FROM BRONCHIT in the Daily Herald.
I moved into a house with a cellar nestling among shoe factories and leather tanneries when I was seven.
We built a theatre in the cellar. Well, my brother did the building. I did the Impersonations. I did Ned Sparkes saying, "They used to call me Laughing Boy. But look at me now!" and Al Jolson singing "Little Pal if Daddy goes away/Promise you'll be good from day to day/Do as mamma says and never sin/Be the man your Daddy mighta bin."
I lived in the house with a cellar until I was 25 when I moved into another house with a cellar, and orchard, 3 attics and a petrol lawn mower.
Although I built a model railway layout in one of the attics (listlessly), I knew at once that I had come to this paradise too late. If I had moved to it when I was nine I should have died of unadultered happiness.
Thgere has been nothing else in my life since then worth reporting. So I'm not going to report it.
