In the summer between infant and junior school I broke my
arm. It happened in Buncrana,
Ireland where I spent every summer holiday visiting my gran and my cousins and
my aunt and uncle. I jumped off
Paul Tierney’s wall. Paul Tierney
and I had been jumping off walls all afternoon. For what was to be my final leap, I had decided to spin
around in the air. I landed on my
left elbow. Paul Tierney, his wall
and his garden dissolved away and I ran screaming across the road and into my
gran’s house.
In
the car on the way back from the hospital, I asked my dad if I would be on the
news. He said he didn’t think
so. I couldn’t believe that
something so momentous wouldn’t make the news. But true enough, it didn’t. I realised that the world must be pretty big and that I must
be pretty small.
Nonetheless,
I returned to school with my arm in a sling anticipating a degree of
celebrity. But kids are stupid and
fickle and any interest in my stricken limb was both little and fleeting. Of course it was. I was now in a class with Shane
Hurley. Shane Hurley had no legs.
I
was in Mrs Anderson’s class now. Mrs Anderson was alright. She had
a high voice and sang very loud in assembly. She had a pronounced vibrato when she sang which made her
warble. Kind of like a wood pigeon.
The
junior school was joined to the infant school only through the kitchens so that
the dinner ladies could serve both schools at once when they came in at
lunch. To all intents and purposes
it was a different building and a different world. In junior school we had houses and team points. You acquired team points for your house
and whichever house had the most points at the end of the year got to put their
colour ribbon on the shield. It
was a big deal. I was in Dunstan
house which was blue and my big sister – who was in the top year – was house
captain. I was keen to do my best.
In
junior school we also had times tables.
These were tricky. Mrs
Anderson taught us the 2s. When
they finally clicked with me, I felt like a genius.
With our respective conditions
making us ineligible for PE or for tearing around the playground at break time,
Shane Hurley and I were forced to hang out and became friends for a while. We bonded over our lack of agility and
a love of the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Plus Shane had a Nintendo which was a
fine catalyst for any friendship.
We
became such good friends that I even braved my fears and stayed the night at
his house once. But then his mum
moved to Harrow and he left school.
I visited him once but he had new friends and they talked different and
liked different things and I never saw him again.
I had a thing for older women and
was often in love with girls in my big sister’s year so it was handy having her
there to pass on my messages of love.
These normally constituted a reluctant ‘my brother fancies you’ combined
with an eye roll at which my big sister was pretty adept. But that didn’t matter. I didn’t even need a response. I just needed to get my feelings out
there. It was a weight off.
Much of my first year I was in
love with a girl called Natalia.
She was tall and very Italian looking and even though I probably saw her
every day and my sister assured me she had passed on my message, she never
looked at me once.
My arm had healed by Christmas and that year, my parents
bought me a basketball. It was a
move inspired by mine and Daniel Ascough’s love of Teen Wolf which had come out and appealed to us greatly. If Thriller
had made us fear werewolves, Teen
Wolf had made us want to be them.
And to play basketball. And
to listen to The Beach Boys and dance on top of moving vans. There was only so much we could achieve
as seven year olds at school so we satisfied ourselves with playing basket ball
at the one rusty, netless netball hoop in our playground and howling as we did
so. It wasn’t just us. Other kids joined in too.
Mine
was the only basketball in a playground of footballs so it attracted a fair bit
of attention. Occasionally bigger
kids would want to play too. And
then one day I found myself playing basketball with Natalia, who was still – thus
far – the love of my life. Here I
was, close to her, playing a game with her. There was electricity in the air – I could feel it. She passed the ball to me. And there I was holding a ball that
Natalia had held. My basketball
had been touched by tall, Italian looking Natalia. I couldn’t speak.
This was special. Keep your cool man, keep your cool. I passed it back to her. And from then on, whenever I got the
ball I passed it straight to Natalia.
It was the most generous, loving thing I could think to do at the
time. And maybe I overplayed that
card.
‘I
KNOOOOW YOU FANCY ME!’ she declared, almost singing the words after I had
passed the ball to her for about the hundredth time.
She
laughed. The other players
giggled. There was the red rush of
embarrassment and continued speechlessness from me and the game fizzled out
awkwardly.
How could I fancy a girl who’d shame
me like that? I couldn’t. Natalia had burst the bubble and I
didn’t fancy her any more. But
that wasn’t a problem. Now I was
free to fancy whoever I liked.
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