I’m sure if you asked my family they wouldn’t say I was a ‘bad kid’. I always said my pleases and thank-yous. I never liked upsetting anyone or seeing anyone upset. In fact, on a few occasions I remember my mam telling me not to be so sensitive as I would see an old person sat eating by themselves and instantly burst into tears. I don’t like the thought of anyone being alone, so I’d daydream about adopting the old person and them coming to live in our spare bedroom. I’d bring them a bowl of Werther’s Originals every morning, and let them watch old documentaries about the war. They would never ever have to be alone again.
However, despite not being a ‘bad kid’ I did have a couple of slip-ups where I would have to be sent to my least favourite seat. The naughty seat. I remember being about six and being told I was only allowed one KitKat from the tin. So I snuck to the kitchen and shoved a whole multipack down my pyjama leggings. I walked to the couch bold as brass with misshapen legs, crackling when I walked from all the tin-foil wrapping, and sitting there watching Changing Rooms on the TV, just waiting for my mam to tell me it was bedtime so I could feast upon all forty KitKat fingers. However, the gas fire was on three bars and all the chocolate soon melted to the point where it started to come through my pyjamas and looked like I had violent diarrhoea. No one won that day: I lost my favourite pair of PJs and my dad had no KitKat for his bait box for work the next morning.
Like I said, I wasn’t a bad kid, in fact I was a bit of a hermit so I didn’t ever get into trouble outside of home. I mostly just read. I’d sit in my rocking chair (I know I sound about eighty) and read endless pages of Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss, C. S. Lewis, Jacqueline Wilson and Terry Deary. The characters were my friends – although I did have a Friday ritual with an actual human being friend. Every Friday, without fail, I would go to my best friend Rosie’s house.
Me and Rosie lounging around with our fab fringes.
Rosie was beautiful inside and out. Confidence oozed from her, she had the most beautiful auburn hair that went right down to her elbows (everybody complimented her on it), porcelain skin and little rosy red cheeks to match her name. We would get given 50p after school to go to Steve and Suki’s shop which would buy us a 20p mix-up bag, a gobstopper, a packet of Space Raiders crisps, a Taz chocolate bar and a juice drink that had been frozen (bloody inflation eh, you couldn’t buy a packet of crisps these days for 50p). Then we would make the walk up Busty Bank and her dad would make us pancakes for tea. Didn’t matter what the weather was – every week it would be pancakes.
Rosie’s dad had rhubarb in his garden, so he’d give us a cup of sugar and a stick of rhubarb and we’d sit and watch Bernard’s Watch and we’d eat our rhubarb, dipping it in the sugar. Then he’d come on through with the pancakes (I had mine with golden syrup on – to be honest it was always more golden syrup than pancake) and we’d watch The Queen’s Nose.
The only drawback was that Rosie’s was the first place I’d ever watched a programme with clowns in it, and ever since I was a bairn, I’ve hated clowns. Where does that come from? My mam said that when I was four, Darlington, a town that I live near, opened its first McDonald’s. We went along to it as soon as it opened as I was so excited for a Happy Meal. I mean, a meal that literally makes you happy. Well, imagine my disappointment when we rock up to find Ronald McDonald was there. I hated him on sight. I was petrified and closed my eyes for so long, I fell asleep.
So I don’t know whose bright idea it was, but one time when I went round Rosie’s – it must have been around Christmas 1999 as the tree was up – we decided to watch It, the Stephen King horror story about a demonic clown (getting into the festive spirit). We were literally nine years old. Oh my God, I didn’t sleep for a week.
I didn’t dare tell my mam, because I knew that she would go mad. But I kept saying, ‘Can I just sleep in your bedroom tonight?’
She’d be like, ‘No, you’ve got to sleep in your own bed.’ I’d just be lying there thinking every shadow or noise was ‘It’. Absolutely terrifying.
Here is another random fact: did you know that Johnny Depp is terrified of clowns? Not being funny but he is best mates with Tim Burton and played a man who had scissors for hands. So if even Captain Jack Sparrow doesn’t like clowns, I don’t feel like I’m being such a wimp after all.
Me and Rosie never discussed It or clowns ever again. We focused on the joy of Christmas and pretended the clown night never happened. Anyway we had bigger things to worry about; it was the Timothy Hackworth Primary School Nativity Play. Me and Rosie and the rest of the class all sat down cross-legged on the cold, hard assembly floor (how we all didn’t have piles from sitting there for hours on end I do not know), with our fingers on lips to
