2. Biography


I was brought up in a town in the middle of England, and the longer I'm away from it the more I wish I was back there.  It's like a ghost town, especially in the Summer evenings, and I love being able to walk around the reasonably built up areas and not see another person in any direction.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was born in another town because the hospital had yet to be built.  I grew up on a housing estate and went to a First School, across The Green.  The Green was just a huge square of grass, formed on three sides by houses, the fourth side the school.  I remember good times, climbing trees, being bullied, being a bully, doing magic tricks in a cupboard with my friend, stealing toys from the teacher's desk.  Eating rice and mint sauce and tomato sauce, all mashed together in a jar; my own concoction.  Hiding in a cupboard and shitting myself when a friend of the family came round.  I remember being the Honky Tonk Man, with a blue plastic guitar, trying to scare off the bully of the Green, Glen.  Glen had a father named Glen who was a friend of my father.  He also had a brother named Caleb and if his sister was called Sarah then the 80s must have seen a shortage of names.  There were small trees I could climb, one I fell out of and stopped breathing for a minute or two, and one tree that towered above everything and no-one could climb it.  My oldest sister crushed my left thumb with a brick and I have the scar to this day.  My best friends were Darrell and Yu-Wan, I played with plasticine and loved Lego and Ghostbusters.  I got a sister when I was two and another when I was six.  My parents used to look after French Students and one of them could make his eyes red.  I once farted incredibly loudly when it was just me, two others and the Head Mistress sitting in the hall; punishment for being a bully.

When I was eight I started Middle School.  Rhona, Denise, Emma and Andrea, plus a guy at the end who was really cool but I can't remember his name.  I made Lego mansions, took them in, they got smashed.  I got My First Computer and wept with joy.  I was bullied by Troy and his sister but his sister looked like a guy and it was all very confusing.  In fact, I don't think his name was Troy at all, but I called them 'Helen and Troy' in my head and that's all I've got to go on.  I once called a kid a 'brownie' and he beat me up for it.  My friends were Darren and Yu-Wan.  I liked Turtles and Star Trek and buried figures in the mud left when they took away the temporary hut.  20p bouncy balls from the machine in the M&Ws.  A mountain that led up to the school.  The school was on the mountain.  Slid down it once and got covered in mud when it was raining lots.

My hometown stars in nearly all of my dreams.  Never like it really is, but like it was when I was small.  So it's bigger, more gothic or greek or magnificent.  Usually I'm running over rooftops and there's no-one around.

Emma, or Miss Meade as we now had to be polite, thought I was clever and said I could go to a Grammar School.  I had no idea what this was but did the test anyway.  Passed.  Was going to go to regular comprehensive school but something changed my mind; I can't remember what.  I once thought I'd lost the note telling me I'd passed but it was in fact stuck up my sleeve.  On the induction day I was laughed at for finger tracing the golden letters on the marble wall.

Started Secondary School with a friend.  Thought I gained more but were all not.  Late nights, no friends, bad times.  Didn't realise it then though, so not all bad.  Started to read Manga and thereafter comics.  Also read a hell of a lot of Asimov and other science fiction.  Got my first PC in 1995 as a result of school.  486SX 25MHz, 4MB RAM, 270MB Hard Drive, Windows 3.1.  Played Jazz Jackrabbit.  Got another sister and a brother.  Messed up first year of Sixth Form and so left early.

For three months I was a Prince's Trust Volunteer.  This is probably what got me into university.  More later.

Restarted Sixth Form with English Literature instead of Physics.  Wise choice, even though I fucked up my A Levels; English was fun, Physics was not.  I wrote several comics, mostly for friend's birthdays.  Did the art too, though calling it art might be a bit generous.  Discovered scanning my face into my new computer, a 300MHz PII, 128MB RAM, 6GB Hard Drive, Windows '98SE, and thereafter made many fine pictures using Paint Shop Pro.

Found out on October 21st 1999 that I have Retinitis Pigmentosa.  Which explained my shitty night vision, something I'd noticed more and more of late, especially when I went away with the Prince's Trust and to Jordan right after.  Also, my peripheral vision, already pretty small (but then, isn't this how everyone sees?) will get smaller and smaller until I am, for all intents and purposes, blind.  Ooh, look!  A speck of light!  It must be daytime!

So I ignore this and in doing so give up on A Levels and life in general and keep going due more to inertia than anything else.  I stop doing homework and don't bother to revise for my exams...  Coursework is handed in days, if not weeks late, but my teachers are very understanding and so I don't get kicked out.  I do go a little nuts one day and throw a school computer out a window, but luckily I only get suspended for a week and because I'm over 18 I arrange it so that my parents never find out.

Against all the odds I pass my A Levels; a B for Computing, a C for English Literature and an E for Mathematics.  Since I applied to study Philosophy, after the speakings of a friend, a university offers me a place, so long as I get BBB.  I got BCE.  So what the hell is going on?  Only things I can put it down to are; the C I got for my Media Studies AS Level (made a very funny Dr Pepper advert for that), the qualifications I got for being a Prince's Trust volunteer, and the fact that most of the rest of the other applicants (six people per place) had done even worse than I.

So now I'm studying Philosophy in London.  I've yet to make a single friend on my course, but the subject matter itself I find very interesting; I find Aristotle's ideas of what the soul are to be refreshing and exciting, and Politics and Ethics are too much fun.  I have an iBook, G3 600MHz, 384MB RAM, 15GB internal hard drive and 60GB external, all under OSX.  Sometimes I forget to sleep and so I fall asleep in lectures, but otherwise it's all good.  Now if only some of those not-quite-goth-chicks would ask me out, I'd be all set ^_^

To be continued.