I only drank about three cans of cider, but that was morethan enough to get me legless and lead to me chucking up all over the kitchenfloor when I got home. My mum was not happy and nor was I. For someone who’donce been effortlessly able to knock back ten pints on a Friday night, this wasa poor show indeed.
My best friend at the time was a lad from school calledMartin who was obsessed with playing computer games. It seemed that we spentmost Sundays together during the winter playing on our ZX Spectrums, incrediblyprimitive machines compared to those in the future.
They were hugely popular at the time, though, and even I hadto admit that they did provide a fair bit of entertainment considering theirlimitations. Martin’s favourite was a game called Football Manager, whichactually wasn’t too bad, though I found it very hard to suppress my giggles atthe little stickman graphics.
The programmers achieved quite a lot with a machine with 48kof RAM, a tiny fraction of the capacity of the computers of the 21st century. JetSet Willy, Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore were among some of thebiggest games of 1984, and if you could get over the simple block graphics andhorrible colour clashes they were quite addictive.
Most games were controlled by the keyboard, but I did havesomething called a Kempston joystick as well. I attempted to use this severaltimes, but it appeared to be broken. Eventually one day it started workingwhich was the day I discovered how it had got broken – with some ratheroverenthusiastic waggling during the 100 metres whilst playing DaleyThompson’s Decathlon.
The most frustrating thing about this computer was that Ihad to load in the games using a small tape recorder. It took several minutesand frequently the computer would crash at the end of the loading process.
This tape recorder doubled as my only way of playingrecorded music, the Walkman now long gone. I used to listen to my top 40 tapesin the evening until John Peel came on to Radio 1 which I listened to on a tinyhandheld AM radio.
Peel used to have indie bands in to the studio to dosessions, and I looked forward to those late nights listening to sessions fromsuch greats as Depeche Mode and The Smiths on 275 metres medium wave.
I was becoming aware of my own mortality. Although everyonehad to face the fact that they were going to die at some point, most werespared knowing exactly when. But I knew that I had just fourteen years left.
In reality, it would be less than that, as I wasn’t going tobe able to do a lot in the first couple of years, remembering Stacey as a baby.What would it be like? Would I remember any of my future life at all? Would Icare about anything other than getting fed and having my nappy changed?
Grown-ups couldn’t remember being babies, so was I destinedto suffer the same fate in reverse?
As I huddled under the covers, on those cold winter eveningsin late-1984, I began to feel very alone and very afraid.
June 1982
It was my final term at primary school and I was adjustingto my new environment. The place was full of little kids and I had to come toterms with the fact that I would soon be one of them.
My memories of my adult life remained with me and at times Ifelt old beyond my years, but I just did my best to adapt as I went along.
Changes were happening to me, both mentally and physically.I’d been through puberty in reverse and now it was over, I had reappraised mysituation with regard to girls.
Having to give up sex wasn’t really any big deal anymore. Infact, I found the whole idea quite distasteful. As for girls, far from findingthem attractive, I now just considered them an annoyance. Given a choicebetween playing football with my mates and hanging out with a girl, my mateswon every time.
Even using Martin’s telescope to spy on the woman who livedopposite him when she got out of the shower didn’t excite me anymore. The wholesubject of sex just seemed silly and embarrassing to me now.
As for self-pleasuring, I’d packed that in a long time ago,sometime around my 13th birthday. I spent most of my free time now hanging outwith friends, either out and about, or on my computer which had now beendowngraded to a ZX81. This made the Spectrum look like rocket science, butthere wasn’t that much else to do.
Board games were pretty popular, and I was pleased that alot of the games that I’d played as an adult were still around. I loved a goodgame of Monopoly, and my clever strategy of building just three houses on eachproperty was normally good enough to outwit my friends.
Football stickers, matchbox cars, marbles and more – all ofthese things that had once seemed childish to me were beginning to seem likegood fun. The adult world I had once lived in seemed distant, and may as wellhave been on another planet for all the relevance it had to me now.
Occasionally I would go down to the garage, pull out thebrick and take a look at the picture of my future family, but the more I lookedat it, the more they looked like strangers. I loved my mum and dad; they weremy family now, not to mention my grandparents, all of whom had entered my lifeduring the 1980s.
The last time I looked at the photo was one Sunday afternoonin June, when I’d been helping my dad in the garden. I’d gone into the garageto put the lawnmower away. We’d had the radio on in the garden for the Top 40,and I could hear Tommy Vance counting down the chart towards the No. 1, whichthat week was House of Fun by Madness.
I took out the photo and looked at the faces I would neversee again. They meant so little to me now. I put the photo back behind thebrick, and went off
