Life's What You Make It Read online

  The second reason for loving the yellow bedroom was the secret camp I had in the wardrobe, where I could safely stash said contraband. Recently, I met a woman who lived in that house a few years after us. After telling her which bedroom I meant – ‘As you look at the front of the house, it’s upstairs on the left’ – I went on to ask if there was still a removable panel on the inside of the built-in wardrobe. She was disappointed to relay that, unfortunately, she had never found it. Ah, what a pity. In my day, it was my hideaway. Through the wardrobe, fingernails at the top of the panel, and there was my own teenage Narnia in the eaves of the roof. Where it lacked Tumnus, it excelled in Health & Efficiency. Those thrilling naturist magazines full of naked people playing tennis, having a barbecue (a risky business; people were much hairier back then!) and sharing a sauna. Looking back, it was as tame as flicking through the underwear section in my mum’s catalogues, but that’s how we got our thrills. Add to that my Manchester United football cards, my collection of stones (to this day, I still take stones from memorable places I’ve been; sadly, I omitted to label them and I now have a reasonable collection of anonymous gravel), and my MI5 secret spy tape, and there you have it – a proper camp.

  The secret spy MI5 tape? Well, when I found it by the side of the road I was terrified I’d get caught in possession of something so obviously highly classified. For weeks, I didn’t tell anyone I had it, I just waited for a late-night banging at the door, the barking of the sniffer dogs and the splintering of wood as Her Majesty’s Secret Service smashed their way into the hall. It was small, rectangular and plastic, with two spools of oxidized micro tape. I’d never seen anything like it before. It was only when the woman next door upgraded her sound system that I saw more of them. I was dumbstruck. She could definitely be a spy – after all, she and her boyfriend had matching E-Types; his was red, hers yellow … God, I loved that red E-type. The day he pranged it I felt almost as bad as he did. Anyway, so, obviously, they’re spies! I’ve busted them wide open. It was only when she put her cassette into the new player and out came the music of Rick Wakeman that I realized what I had in my possession might not be quite so special. Turns out it was the Bee Gees’ Main Course album. Wasn’t a bad listen, actually, and when I got to ‘Fanny, Be Tender with My Love’, I laughed for days.

  It’s a wonder I survived, really. Only when you look back at the madness of youth do you realize how bloody close you got to calamity. We used to ride our bikes up to the headland to hang out. We’d sit, chatting (and smoking) with our feet dangling over the cliff edge, the sea crashing into the Tea Caverns about a hundred feet below. These huge caves were notorious in the town’s history for stashing smuggled goods, usually China tea, which would provide rich rewards, if they got away with it. What never entered my head was the fact that the mighty Atlantic was boiling on the rocks below. If you look at that cliff edge now, the bit we sat on has long since fallen in … and that’s my point! We were literally sitting on the thinnest outcrop of heather and air. We were a miracle away from a one-way Tea Cavern excursion. DO NOT DO THIS.

  We each made a ‘Dilly’, essentially, a go-kart consisting of a plank of wood, a box at the back to sit in, big pram wheels at the rear and smaller wheels at the front mounted on a cross plank with a rope attached to steer. We would push off, yelping with delight as we picked up ridiculous speed down Riverside Avenue. Now, I’ve always been shite at DIY – any family member will tell you – so it’s inevitable that something I’ve made is going to come apart, and those Dillys did so with alarming regularity and in spectacular style. My mates would scream with laughter as I flew past. I’d feel the first vibrations of an impending systems failure, then something would come apart: a wheel, the box, the plank … me. As another creation tore itself to bits at breakneck speed, I would roll and bounce, along with the rest of the debris, down the road, but it was worth it. ‘Mate, that was incredible, you’re such an idiot,’ was all I needed to hear.

  My happy place on the rocks by the sea in Newquay.

  One of the happiest days ever came when I walked out of the back door to see my new present. My birthday is in April, but I’d waited until July to take delivery of my yellow Chopper. Oh, I loved that bike, almost as much as I loved the red E-Type. Long seat, three-gear stick shift. It had to be yellow. I didn’t like the orange, and I wanted either the red or the yellow to match one of the E-Types next door, and I preferred the yellow. There it was, brand new and gleaming. I saved my summer money and bought two battery horns, a switch on each handlebar, so if I pressed them alternately it sounded like a police car (what a nob). One thing was missing – it had to have a speedo; but this was stretching the finances, so I had to put in a few extra hours at the kiosk. Finally, it was fully kitted out – oh yeah! I put mirrors on it, too. I rode it for miles. It’s funny how everyone needs to know where you are now, every second. Are you okay? You didn’t call – when are you home? In those simpler times, it was ‘I’m going out on my bike’ at nine in the morning, and I’d come home at nine at night to a dried-out dinner and the threat of a grounding.

  With my brother on the yellow Chopper; the Dutch VW van in the background.

  The day I ‘Choppered’ Rejerrah hill is a day I shouldn’t be proud of, but I am. A day I was lucky to survive and one of those days I’m glad my folks didn’t know where I was. The hill is a few miles out of Newquay, on the way to Goonhavern on the A3705, steep down, then steep back up the other side. On a bike, my theory was, the more momentum you build up on the way down one side, the further up the other side you’d get and the less you’d knacker your legs trying to pedal up it. I’m not sure if it was a dare, but I’m pretty sure ‘You’ve got a speedo, how fast can you go?’ were among the words spoken.

  We set out early because it’s a fair old trek, and later that morning I sat astride the yellow lightning streak at the brow of the hill, looking at the drop and the climb on the other side. This is a main road: it was then; it is now. My dad’s mate had a car accident on the hill in a Lotus Europa, bright orange, made out of fibreglass. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but he was flying down the hill and he only touched the other car, but the Europa literally disappeared in a puff of fibre around him. Apparently, by the time he got halfway up the other side, he was sitting on just the chassis! Still makes me laugh.

  So it’s a dangerous hill, especially if you’re a teen fool on a Chopper, and as cycling helmets were a good few years away, a teen fool with a fully visible Noel Edmonds hairstyle, centre parting, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and … flip-flops. The agreement was that my mates would watch as I attempted the feat, then I’d rejoin them and we’d all ride home, and I’d be the hero.

  As I set off, I’m pretty sure someone said something about dying, but it was too late. It became very obvious, very quickly, that my legs weren’t going to be playing a major role in the descent. After about ten seconds they were flying round on the pedals so fast I was forced to retract the landing gear and put my feet up by the gear stick. Now I’m really shifting it (at this point spelt with an ‘f’!), 20 … 30 … 40 … 50 mph. My seventies Noel Edmonds cut is streaming out behind me. I realize at that point, if there is the tiniest of quivers in my hands, the bike will begin a catastrophic ‘Dilly-like’ wobble. (Now change the ‘f’ to a ‘t’!) This is ridiculous, way too fast. The speedo only goes up to sixty and the needle is almost there.

  Three quarters of the way down, it hits sixty, the needle stops on the limiter pin. I’m almost at the bottom, galvanized with fear, the noise of the wind is deafening. Please make it stop. I glance down to see the speedometer needle snap off. I don’t have time to be angry that I broke it; it took a lot of red men and Coke cans to buy it, but I’ll only consider anger and disappointment if I actually survive. I’m levelling off, at last. I start to fly up the other side.

  One of the greatest surprises of the experience was that, on a bike, using only momentum, the speed bleeds off really quickly. In moments, I’m rapidly slowing. Did I really think I�
��d reach the top of the other side? A quarter of the way up, I can think about putting my feet on the pedals. Slower, slower, then stop. My heart is racing, my palms are wet through, I’m totally pumped with adrenaline. I turn back to my mates and wave, and they wave back to me. I’m alive, and surely that has to be some kind of yellow-Chopper record? I turn around, wheel the bike to the other side of the road and, using the brakes, coast back to the bottom and look up. Shit! There’s no way I can pedal all the way up there, so I get off and push. It seems to take hours to get back to my starting place, and when I do, they’re gone. Bored of waiting, they’ve set off home, and I ride back into town, tired but triumphant. I saw them the next day.

  ‘How fast did you go?’

  ‘The speedo needle snapped off at sixty.’

  ‘Ah, right.’

  ‘Yeah, broke the speedo.’

  ‘Right.’

  And that was it, but that was my mates. Next.

  I can’t say that my friends were always the best, if I’m honest, but that was partly my fault. There were principally three of us, never a great combination, and we were so good at making it difficult for ourselves. Only two of us were ever mates at any one time, so for the third there was an obligatory period in exile. It was so frustrating because I always seemed to be the one left out at the start of the summer holidays. I say it was partly my fault, because when it was my turn to be ‘in’ the mix, I revelled in the attention and made whoever was the third wheel at that time pay. On the rare occasion the three of us would all get on and hang out together as a trio, that was when, for me, it was the best fun.

  One of our summer holidays was spent working at the Tank Range. Obviously, you’re now thinking Territorial Army and military hardware. Not quite. My dad’s boss at the surf factory had diversified into boutiques and surf shops. The boutiques were a hippy cornucopia. I bought stupidly tight Karmann Ghia high-waisted jeans and cheesecloth shirts as the Beach Boys played. Every mystic fragrance of incense was there – sandalwood, patchouli, jasmine and pine (the back of that wardrobe smelled amazing). Quick note: you can’t crush and smoke a patchouli incense stick, or indeed any incense stick; the taste is particularly awful.

  So, with the shops came the brilliant idea of a tank range, built on the same principle as those remote-controlled boats on a lake. It was decided that twenty-five miniature Sherman tank kits should be bought. My dad designed the rolling hills, trees and pill boxes for the range and we were going to set it up in an empty shop next door to the boutique. The three amigos (currently all getting on) were to build the tanks over the winter. About a foot long each and incredibly intricate, they were pigs to build. The tracks alone consisted of hundreds of tiny parts. It wasn’t long before one amigo got bored and didn’t come back.

  By the start of the summer, the range had been finished, thirty-two Sherman tanks built and individually sprayed. It was an impressive sight. My summer job that year was to supervise and fix. I worked in shifts, sometimes with Dad. The shifts with him were my least favourite, because he wouldn’t let me sit down. It all seemed like a great idea, until we reached the fundamental flaw: the batteries were fantastically incendiary. I’d have my back to the range, standing in the fake supervisor’s pill box, fixing another broken track, when I’d hear a child cry out in glee.

  ‘Oh my God, Dad, that’s so realistic! Did I shoot you?’

  ‘I don’t know, son, but this is the best 10p I’ve ever spent.’

  A rapid turn to face the range and I could see that it was happening again: the batteries had overheated and the tank was comprehensively on fire. In the middle of the battlefield the horror of the combat theatre had visited us once more. As impressed customers watched the show, a skinny kid in high-waisted flares ran from the pill box with an extinguisher. Choking black smoke, molten plastic, red-hot batteries – all part of the job. I removed the smoking wreckage and decided that combat wasn’t for me (a thought confirmed some years later, when I was involved in a very frightening Red Arrows crash, but that’s for another chapter). There had to be an easier way to earn my summer money. I refunded the tourists their 10p and resigned.

  Until I finally hit upon my greatest money-making idea, I was on the look-out for another job, so when the local wide-boy offered me a gig selling candyfloss, I figured I was quids in. How hard could that be?! Turns out, on specific days of the year, it’s tougher than it looks.

  ‘So, you know what to do?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Just put the sugar and dye into the centre, turn the spinner on, turn the heater on, and then, when the floss sticks to the side, just hook it out and swirl it on to the stick.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, cool.’

  A word of advice: if your candyfloss audition should fall on a day that is both humid and windy, you’re stuffed. As the queue lengthened, the farce unfolded. What the waiting tourists witnessed was really rather pathetic. As the floss spun out, the humidity prevented it from sticking to the sides, so it just hovered in there as a sugary-pink, gravity-defying hoop, waiting for a gust of wind to lift it, fully formed from the bowl, and throw it at me. In the hour that I was left alone, I didn’t make one single candyfloss; however, I was wearing about 4 lbs of pink, sugary goo. When the wide-boy came back, it was to the forlorn sight of a lanky teen, virtually glued to the spot. It was in my hair, my nose; it had all but sealed my eyes shut. Flip-flops proved powerless to prevent it getting between my toes and the soles of my feet. He looked at me, I (coloured pink) looked back at him, the wasps lazily buzzed around me.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go.’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  Wasps and bees have always been an issue for me. I found out very early on in life that I’m allergic to both. If I get stung, it makes me, initially, very light-headed, and then as I start to black out I feel like I’m sliding down a well, wrapped in black velvet. It’s scary, but not altogether unpleasant. It usually takes me about an hour to recover. The more severe the sting, the further down the well I slide. I’m aware of everything going on around me but I find it difficult to respond. Usually those around me keep asking if I’m okay, and as long as I can give them a thumbs-up, no one panics. I carry an EpiPen with me just in case – well, I say I carry it … If I get stung, it’s in the kitchen cupboard.

  I’ve only ever been fired twice in my life, from Arthur’s candyfloss stand, and from Capital Radio. The second one wasn’t really my fault either, as you will discover.

  That walk home from the candyfloss episode was hideous. There are a few things that go right through me. The scraping of metal on metal, which is why I can’t ever go on I’m a Celeb – the eating utensils are all metal, so I’d just starve, covered in goosebumps. I told you earlier that I can’t bear being wet and sandy. When I was tiny, apparently I’d just sit on the beach with my hands in the air! A habit all those around me are thrilled I have outgrown. I can’t stand to be sticky, and 4 lbs of candyfloss more than qualifies. If I touch anything that is sticky and it gets on my hands, I have to wash them immediately or I feel really uncomfortable and anguished. Oh, and I don’t like glitter, for the same reason. This is really annoying, because it is exploited by those who know me. Glitter on my hands is torture, so why not send me the glitteriest card you can find?! And then there’s that one speck on your face that means someone suddenly has permission to grab your head, turn it back and forth, seeking the correct light, and then start picking at your face to get it off! Don’t do it. I don’t like it.

  I never found out who sent a purple glitter bomb to my home recently. I’d just got in from work and I was alone in the kitchen, opening mail. I came to a small wrapped tube, the kind of thing that might have a scroll inside, and when I opened it, it exploded with a huge burst of purple glitter. I was covered, the kitchen was covered, and I just sat there, glittery mouth open, stunned. I had been got, comprehensively! If it was you, and you’re reading this and you’ve decided to come clean, don’t … it’s still not funny.
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  So, what to do? Kiosk? Done that. Tank range? Resigned. Candyfloss? Fired. I was racking my brains, and then one night as I listened to Peter Powell on Radio Luxembourg, I knew what to do – I’d buy a disco. I would have the daytime to myself, as I’d work in the evenings, and I’d make more money than any of my mates. For a year, I saved all I could. I waited on tables at the guest house (that’s where I got my love of cold toast, which I ate when the guests left it), I cleaned the rooms, did odd jobs, saved birthday and Christmas money, and by the following summer, I was there. We all drove to Bristol and I bought a pair of Citronic Hawaii decks, my dad built some lightboxes and, slowly but surely, I began buying the top forty.

  Obviously, I had to think of a name. What should I call my new venture? This needed careful thought. And then …

  ‘Your dad has got you a gig,’ said Mum.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘They had to put it in the hotel events list,’ said Dad.

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘So, you needed a name.’

  ‘Riiiight?’

  ‘So, wait for it … you’re the Galaxy Disco!’ He beamed.

  ‘That’s a bloody chocolate bar!’ I yelped, slapping my hand on my forehead.

  ‘Oh, they’ll never think of that,’ said Mum. ‘And don’t swear.’

  I was the Galaxy Disco by accident. We embraced it. Dad made me a lightbox with the name on it, which I still have, and I was in business. He was going to be my roadie. We’d always had VW caravanettes. He would fly to Amsterdam, buy an ex-company one cheap, then bring it home and kit it out as a camper van. As a family, Mum, Dad, my amazing brother Tim and me would celebrate the end of the summer by going camping, to France or Ireland. (In Ireland, I slid into an extremely precarious position and kissed the Blarney Stone, thinking maybe that might help me in the future and give me the promised ‘gift of the gab’ … ) Though Mum could navigate beautifully, Dad would never listen, so we discovered all sorts of places we didn’t mean to go and, as a consequence, never got to the places we intended to visit. Only trouble was, before it was pimped into a ‘holiday home’, it was still a former Dutch company van. So it was that I arrived at the Highbury Hotel for my first gig in a VW painted red and green with ‘ACF Farmaceutische Groothandel’ on the side.