Mummy's Boy

I heart my mother too and don't want her to feel left out. Let's not pretend that we had no polemics in my formative years but when my brother and I realised she was as permanently pissed off with my dad as we were, an informal alliance was formed.

Here the three of us are, looking like extras from Lords Of Dogtown. I spent much of the 1980s trying to forget my parent-prescribed curly blonde mop but I've since repented. In my first year of school, Mrs. Lomas put me in the girls' line for the toilet and I had a bitch of a time convincing her I was actually a boy! The neighbourhood has changed so much since that picture was taken, circa 1978. If I could click my fingers and disappear the high fences, the street paving, the security cameras and the street lighting, I so would. Who wouldn't?



Behind the camera's point of view in that old picture of my mum, the lane slopes past neighbours' houses for about 100 yards down to a railway bridge. The other side the bridge was green fields. I'd play there with the friends I had at that age - B.J, M.R, M.C, C.H, G.P, I.P, S.W, and P.G - and we'd avoid the ones with cattle in. Now, the farm has sold its land and the building pictured above sits there. I say "sits" but it's rumoured that there's just as much of it again underground because it's the new Ministry Of Defence H.Q. In. My. Back. Yard. It's not all blood and tears, though: I got a new train station out of it and now I can get to the centre of Bristol in under ten minutes, virtually door to door.

These days my beautiful mother is a financially-independent cancer survivor with three part-time jobs and a voluntary fourth as a lay magistrate. She can't afford much extravagance in her life but she's happy and if that isn't the most important thing then I don't want to hear about it.