Well thanks Marjolein for tagging me. For anyone who doesn't know, there's a tagging game going on at the moment. The idea is to spring stuff out of us that we wouldn't normally tell. And, in the normal course of events, I'm not sure they'd care. As we head into the holiday season, it seems like a bit of fun and perhaps a chance to seem more human. The question is, what five things to say that would remotely interest our readers?
Here goes:
1) I absolutely love writing. Always did, right from when I could first hold a pencil. I wonder if this would still have been the case had the surgeons had their way with my right thumb when I was three? My father was an out-of-work sheet metal worker. He set up a workshop in a shed at the bottom of the garden. I used to watch him make all manner of things from metal. He was a local legend for his wrought-iron gates.
He had one machine called a fly-press. A heavy metal ball would be swung to turn a screw which bore down on sheet metal, stamping out shapes. One day, he'd been stamping out shapes like a circle with three little arms. No-one knows how the ball was swung but we all know that I pushed some metal in position and watched as the end of my thumb was carefully chopped off.
The first hospital said "amputation", so my parents insisted on going to a different hospital with the spare bit of thumb and me in tow. This hospital said "worth a try" and they stuck the thumb back, covered it in green powder, bound it up and sent me home. The scar's still there - from the bottom left to the top right of my nail, but their gamble paid off.
Thanks guys and girls. I owe you big time.
2) As a teenager, I sometimes rode a bicycle with no hands and sometimes stood on the crossbar, holding the handlebars. One day, I figured I could combine the two stunts - go along standing on the crossbar and not holding the handlebars.
Three months on crutches told me this was a miscalculation.
Which leads me to...
3) While on crutches, I met a lovely girl (Christine Allwork if you must know) who was also on crutches. Turned out that she had an artificial limb and she needed a rest from wearing it. We got on great. So well, in fact, that when we had both thrown away our crutches and she asked me if I'd like to go with her for an assessment at the Arthur Murray School of Dancing. I readily agreed, being fond of her company, but having grave misgivings about dancing.
After the ordeal (for me) was over, Christine was praised to death for her poise, her sense of rhythm - "a natural talent". And they didn't know about the leg. I, the guy with two whole legs, was told I was clueless.
4) In 1965, I sold newspapers on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, then worked as a receptionist in a hospital there, then sold menswear in a UK department store. Fortunately, while I was there, it rained on the way home from work...
5) ... and I took refuge in an office block. Altercations with receptionist, then security, then management ensued. All were trying to throw me out. In desperation I said, "what does NCR do, anyway?" The manager (Philip Maylor) seemed relieved that he could switch from persecutor to rescuer and said, "we make cash registers, adding machines, accounting machines and computers." What's a computer", said I. He explained. I expressed interest. He offered to give me a programming aptitude test the next day.
Apparently I was only the sixth to score 100%. My destiny had found me.
Who to tag? Good question. How about:
David Terrar, Toby Moores, Jeff Nolan, Dennis Howlett and Richard Wallis?
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I think I should say cheers! (but I'm not sure). Thinking cap on, will post later today.
Posted by: David Terrar | December 22, 2006 at 08:15 AM