Fell at the first fence

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

My first moment of responsibility came at infant's school so that would make me no more than 7. Mrs Savage, our class teacher, said she was going to leave the room and that everyone was to get on with their work and not talk. She sat me down at her desk and told me to write the names of anybody who did on the blackboard.

Well, David Innocence was the first to start talking. A more inaptly named child, you'd be hard to find. To this day, I still bear the scar on my forehead (three stitches) from the time he knocked me over in the cinema and I gashed my head on a seat hinge. But that was later.

So in the class, I told him that his name was going on the blackboard. He shouted something like, 'Don't do that Oatsey, I'll give you some cigarette cards,' the latter being the currency of young boys of the time, say 1951. So we negotiated: I took the cards and left his name off.

Such is life.