Small Man in a Book (7 page)

Mine would soon be out of their uniforms and in their bespoke outfits that I’d made from old socks. A hole would be cut at the toe for their head to pop through, followed by two smaller holes at the side for the arms, with an elastic band serving as a belt. It was a sort of Roman slave tunic inspired, I suspect, by Kirk Douglas in
Spartacus
, the first film I ever cried at, sitting on the sofa between Mum and Dad, watery eyes glued to the telly. I made quite a few little outfits for my Action Men; this, combined with a love of not only Donny Osmond but also the Bay City Rollers, might prompt the reader to a few conclusions with regards to my young self and matters of orientation. Rest assured that I always knew where to draw the line when it came to my slightly fey leanings.

I offer as proof the time that my grandmother bought me a purple T-shirt on which was printed the face of Donny Osmond. Much as I loved what he and his crazy brothers were doing in challenging the perceived norms of contemporary music, I knew deep inside that it would simply be wrong for a young boy of my age to wear such a T-shirt. And so I broke Nan’s heart with my refusal, ‘Good God, woman, no! What the hell were you thinking?!’ That’s what a more forceful, not to say rude, child might have said. I politely declined, offering up all manner of excuses.

Despite waving the flag for sensitive, artistic children everywhere I was also involved in more boyish pursuits, and my love of trees and dens continued to grow unabated. One particularly ambitious Sunday morning I decided to build an extensive new lair in the garden, and soon realized that I needed far more in the way of raw materials if I was to do justice to my architectural vision. So I set off just down the hill from our house to a point where a few trees stood on a grass verge at the side of the road. I climbed up, knife in hand, for twelve feet or so to where the tree divided off into a network of branches and then, sitting on one, began to saw at a limb. I tugged away at the branch with one hand while hacking at it with the other, all the while blind to the laws of physics, which confidently predicted my imminent downfall. Not unlike the splendid Wyle E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons – when he speeds off a clifftop and only falls when he looks down and realizes what he’s done – at the point that the branch parted company with the tree I suddenly recognized the folly of my ways and plummeted downwards, landing in a dead weight on the grass and knocking myself out cold in the process. Luckily for me a local man, George Williams, happened to be passing, walking his dog, and he witnessed my fall. Were it not for him, I might still be there now.

He hurried over to find my lifeless body lying limp and abandoned amongst the long grass and, no doubt aware of the weight of responsibility dictating that he should do the right thing, immediately flagged down the next person he saw. As luck would have it, that next person was my father, returning from the pub, where he’d been enjoying his traditional pre-Sunday-lunch drink.

‘Come and look, Howard! Whose boy is this?’

Dad wandered over to help, full of public-spiritedness, only to receive the awful shock of seeing his own son lying in the long grass. Rather like George Cole’s Arthur Daley in
Minder
, when realizing that one of his plans had gone asunder Dad uttered a quick, ‘Oh my good God!’ and then concentrated on not passing out himself. I was ushered into the car and taken, still unconscious, to the nearby Neath hospital and wheeled along a corridor to be examined by a doctor; all the while Dad was leaning over me in a concerned manner. Bear in mind that he’d come upon me directly from the pub and so each time he gazed down at my pale unflinching face he breathed out a constant stream of, frankly, alcoholic fumes. (Probably worth pointing out here that it was the fumes that were alcoholic, not Dad.) On examining me, the doctor couldn’t help but notice the sweet stench of beer and enquired, not unreasonably, ‘Has your son been drinking?’

Mum would not have been pleased at such a suggestion; I would only have been seven or eight years old, and I’ve no doubt she would have put the doctor straight in a direct and unambiguous manner. Anyway, I came around eventually and all was well, although I must have liked the hospital as I was to return a few weeks later, this time conscious but in some pain, after attempting to build a slide in the back garden. (Mum says I was accident-prone as a child, and these stories do tend to back up her argument.) I thought it would be a good idea, again on a Sunday morning – a particularly dangerous time for me, it would appear – to build a slide in the garden, a rollercoaster almost. To do this I took a ladder and placed one end up on the top of a low wall. This positioned the ladder at roughly forty-five degrees. Perfect. I then placed a plastic sledge, specifically a sand sledge – we used to go regularly to the sand dunes at Merthyr Mawr near Bridgend (as seen in
Lawrence of Arabia
– no, really …) and career around on these little sledges – at the top of the dunes. My plan was to slide down the ladder, and I was curious as to how far I would continue to travel once I hit the ground.

Holding the sledge in place with one hand, at the summit of my slide, I carefully climbed on to my chariot and surveyed the scene. Everything looked good. The sky was clear, there was little wind and, in my opinion, forty-five degrees was steep enough to get a bit of speed up but not so steep that I might come to any harm. I launched myself off and hurtled down, reaching the ground with a bump and stopping just inches from the foot of the ladder. The only thing out of the ordinary to have happened on my fantastic journey was the unmistakable ripping sound I heard as I reached the bottom, a kind of tearing noise. Strange. I stood up and noticed that a length of fabric from the left leg of my trousers, Sunday best trousers at that, was hanging down at my side, torn. That would explain the noise, then. I glanced at the sledge and saw that it too had suffered some damage, a huge tear down the left side, a gaping hole in the hull of the vessel.

This was when I realized that I’d made the mistake of placing the top of the ladder at the bottom of my slide. The top of the ladder was where the metal hooks, the sharp metal hooks through which you could slide another ladder, were located. I felt a curious sensation in my leg and looked down. There, in full view thanks to the torn trouser, was my thigh, hanging open and exhibiting what, even to my untrained eye were evidently several layers of me. Lovely. That was when it began to hurt, only once I’d
seen
it. Very strange. I went in the house to find Mum and first apologized for ripping my best trousers before showing her the collateral damage. Off we went to the hospital again, not returning until my poor little thigh had been stitched up. The scar is still there, just below my bum.

If you’re ever in the area, do have a look.

4

Through my early childhood we had often hooked a caravan up to the car and headed off to a couple of spots around Wales – Brecon, and New Hedges near Tenby – and across the Severn Bridge into Dorset. Then, in the spring of 1977, Mum and Dad bought a large static caravan on a site in Lawrenny, West Wales, in those days a few hours’ drive from Baglan through lovely countryside, though now a considerably shorter journey thanks to the expanding motorway. Well done, the M4. A few friends already had places there, and the idea was that we would spend weekends and school holidays at the caravan with Mum, being joined by Dad when he could get away from work. Lawrenny is a tiny village, not a million miles away from Tenby, and the small caravan site was adjacent to Lawrenny Yacht Club where many of the caravan dwellers had boats in which they would sail, motor or paddle on the Cleddau Estuary. The estuary goes out past Pembroke Dock and Milford Haven to the Irish Sea and inland as far as Haverfordwest. We bought a little red speedboat, a Picton Speedmaster, and would take it out on the water most weekends.

I loved Lawrenny. It’s surrounded by trees, and that’s where you would find me when I wasn’t on the water. I was in den-building heaven, scampering out to the woods from the moment I woke up in the little bedroom at the back of the caravan, where Pete and I had bunk beds with me in the Ronnie Barker spot on the top bunk and Pete taking the Richard Beckinsale role on the bottom. I’d head out and into the woods, ideally before Pete could claim to have heard me calling out girls’ names in my sleep, and joyfully take to the trees. There was a spot a few minutes’ walk into the woods, near the banks of the estuary, at the remains of some old brick cottage, where a few friends and I had built a tree house of sorts with a ropeway connecting two trees on which I’d walk back and forth, imagining I was Tarzan.

Further inland, away from the water, past the ditch we’d covered with thin sticks and leaves, creating a primitive yet successful mantrap where we once disabled a fully grown man and his dog, was a slope with a large tree from which we’d hung a swing. There were two options with the swing: the straightforward back and forth approach that, depending on the speed of trajectory, could take you out over the nearby barbed-wire fence, high into the air; or the more ambitious sweeping sideways motion that would take you round the tree and dangerously closer to the barbed wire. Far more kudos was at stake with this method, especially if your dirty Adidas or Puma trainers could be seen to have only just cleared the barbed wire.

I was happiest, though, back at the tree house and would often spend time there on my own, once climbing to the very top of the tree on an especially windy day. From here I could see the peaks of the neighbouring trees, and also the estuary as it headed off in both directions. When the wind picked up, I was at first scared, but then began to relish holding onto the tree as it swayed, gently at first, with each new gust. The wind became stronger and the tree began to move a few feet each way. I closed my eyes and hung on tightly, breathing the fresh salty air through my nose and hearing the angry rush of the wind as it chased itself through the leaves and branches all around me. This most singular experience has stayed with me and is one of the most evocative of my childhood. It is responsible for my continued love of the sound trees make as they’re buffeted by the wind.

It was on the water that we spent most of our time at Lawrenny; we had the little speedboat in which we would buzz around here, there and everywhere. Then after a while, Dad wanted something bigger and was tempted to buy a little cruiser.
The Prophet
was a 24-foot-long Cleopatra 700 with a 140-horsepower inboard engine; she was canary yellow with a bench seat at the back, two raised seats at the cockpit and a spacious cabin inside. We’ve often wondered since if the name was incomplete. Had the words
of Doom
been washed away by the corrosive salty water as it slammed the hull on previous misadventures? Dad’s friends, who knew more than a thing or two about boats and boating, had advised – warned, even – against buying it, but Dad didn’t listen and coughed up regardless. He was keen to see his family take to the high seas in a larger, more impressive vessel than the faithful little Picton that never let us down.

Before the inferno. Pete and I on
The Prophet
in 1977. In an unrelated incident, Elvis would soon be dead.

Me and David in Lawrenny. Insert your own crab joke:

For our first outing, we filled her up to her full 55-gallon capacity and set off inland to Cresswell Quay and a lovely little pub, the Cresselly Arms, run in those days by a Mrs Davies. Indeed, you wouldn’t say you were going to the Cresselly Arms, you’d say you were going to Mrs Davies’s. It was, and still is, one of the few pubs in Wales where the beer is served from jugs. It was only possible to reach Cresswell Quay by water when the tide allowed. Once there, departure was again dictated by the tide; leave it too long and you’d be stuck, waiting for the tide with only the pub for company. Maybe that was the appeal. On arrival, boats would tie up to the quay wall (and here also it was wise to exercise caution, as the wall contained a sewage outlet under which many unlucky novice sailors had left their vessels only to return an hour or so later to a nasty shock). On arrival, Mum and Dad would head inside with their friends, while Pete and I would stay outside with our friends and provisions in the form of Coke and crisps.