Writer's Block: When I Was Young
Jun. 23rd, 2009 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knox[Error: unknown template qotd]
- Very little.
I remember being a huge fan of Space. I couldn't get enough of it. The further away from Earth I found myself in my imagination, the better I felt. (No wonder I fell in love with Traveller before any other roleplaying game).
There was this book about a robot dog. I can't remember all of it, because my memory of it is sketchy. I remember being in Caernarfon and seeing it there in a bookstore. I also remember the weekly Saturday shop in Tesco with Mum, and a shop just a little way up the road, where I saw these little magnetic ladybirds and bugs.
I don't miss the school, or the staff, or the other pupils. A place so full of hatred that it really ought to be torn down. A surprising number of former pupils of that school went on to do time. The exceptions are, like Bryn Terfel, truly exceptional.
(Yes, I went to school with Wales' finest opera singer. He used to tease my sister something rotten, the gentle soul that he is. And I admire him so much because he was kind to me, as I was to him and his big sister Rhian).
There was pain, and violence, and suffering, delivered by staff as much as by the pupils. When I drew something, it would be ripped to shreds by a bully; teachers would make me stand in the corner, even though I was able to answer questions that nobody else in the class could answer - perhaps because I could answer questions nobody else could answer. Like how to spell "tongue," or the French word for thirteen ("Treize," which next to "Do svedanya" is one of the earliest bits of foreign language I ever learned).
I was described as "hating maths." Perhaps I could have grown to love maths back then. If the teacher hadn't been that abominable child abuser, the monstrous Mr Roberts.
It might be ironic to the staff of that school to learn that, long after departing that hell hole and moving to Wrexham, to take up schooling at St Joseph's; long after school was just a distant, bitter memory; I have one of the sharpest minds for mental arithmetic in this town. Numbers are beautiful. The world turns on numbers; the laws of the universe are based on them; numbers underpin matter, energy, time, space, love and life itself.
And do you know when I learned this love of number? In my adulthood.
Those motherfuckers in infant school never taught me a fucking thing. Whatever I learned, I taught myself.
So no. I don't miss that part of my childhood.
I do miss some things, though.
Taid playing with me, with little brass candlesticks and spent bullet casings. (I wasn't to know those were WWII surplus ammunition casings) and talking about things like The Tomorrow People back then. I had no idea he was hinting about the Proffwyd line.
Wonder if Taid would be proud that I grew up to be a writer? Or a computer geek with friends from all over the world? Or a Klingon language fan?
Or a Proffwyd warlock?
Taid showing me magnets. I remember that so clearly. I'd never imagined anything like it. Metals that pull at one another, and stick together like something's keeping them from separating. It had to be magic!
I remember Lon Ddwr, and walking along with Taid, and falling asleep with his coat wrapped around me as he carried my little frame home, and getting sunburned, and this teenage girl called Lydia, and falling in love with the actress Ayesha, and being amazed and delighted to see my first black and Asian people - "O brave new world, that has such people in't" and all that. Their beautiful faces and skin. Their smiles. The joy of moving in to a brand new place, and all the possibilities that they could see.
Those little moments, I miss.
Learning Latin, and French, and falling in love for the first time, and missing someone who went away forever. Those, too.
Glyn Owens. I miss him. It must be, what thirty years. He was unforgettable.
And some memories I do not miss, because they are with me always. The Big Hat Man, from my childhood. The skeletal form that loomed over my bed, with the long, bony hand descending towards me. I must have been only a few months, and Death paid a family visit to look at the newcomer to the Clan.
(Which is why, when I draw the Death card in a Tarot spread, I always say "Hello, old friend.")
I miss those few moments of love in my life. Like watching the Apollo 11 landing. Like little brass candlesticks, and red genie bottles, and not pointing at rainbows in case they went away, and being able to say "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll - Llantysiliogogogoch" for the first time, and my first pocket calculator, and getting a Swiss Army Knife at 16 (how very Klingon Rite of Ascension of me!).
But you can keep the bullying and the pain. That is something civilisation should learn to do without. Maybe we would be civilised if people who made a habit of bullying were branded and treated as pariahs, and those who loved and accepted, and who were honest, were given roles of prominence in society. But since we venerate bullies and trample peacemakers into the dirt, I guess that means we are not a real civilisation.
At least, I've never felt like I've been living in a civilised society. And that is something I cannot miss from my childhood, because I don't think I ever had that feeling to begin with.
- Very little.
I remember being a huge fan of Space. I couldn't get enough of it. The further away from Earth I found myself in my imagination, the better I felt. (No wonder I fell in love with Traveller before any other roleplaying game).
There was this book about a robot dog. I can't remember all of it, because my memory of it is sketchy. I remember being in Caernarfon and seeing it there in a bookstore. I also remember the weekly Saturday shop in Tesco with Mum, and a shop just a little way up the road, where I saw these little magnetic ladybirds and bugs.
I don't miss the school, or the staff, or the other pupils. A place so full of hatred that it really ought to be torn down. A surprising number of former pupils of that school went on to do time. The exceptions are, like Bryn Terfel, truly exceptional.
(Yes, I went to school with Wales' finest opera singer. He used to tease my sister something rotten, the gentle soul that he is. And I admire him so much because he was kind to me, as I was to him and his big sister Rhian).
There was pain, and violence, and suffering, delivered by staff as much as by the pupils. When I drew something, it would be ripped to shreds by a bully; teachers would make me stand in the corner, even though I was able to answer questions that nobody else in the class could answer - perhaps because I could answer questions nobody else could answer. Like how to spell "tongue," or the French word for thirteen ("Treize," which next to "Do svedanya" is one of the earliest bits of foreign language I ever learned).
I was described as "hating maths." Perhaps I could have grown to love maths back then. If the teacher hadn't been that abominable child abuser, the monstrous Mr Roberts.
It might be ironic to the staff of that school to learn that, long after departing that hell hole and moving to Wrexham, to take up schooling at St Joseph's; long after school was just a distant, bitter memory; I have one of the sharpest minds for mental arithmetic in this town. Numbers are beautiful. The world turns on numbers; the laws of the universe are based on them; numbers underpin matter, energy, time, space, love and life itself.
And do you know when I learned this love of number? In my adulthood.
Those motherfuckers in infant school never taught me a fucking thing. Whatever I learned, I taught myself.
So no. I don't miss that part of my childhood.
I do miss some things, though.
Taid playing with me, with little brass candlesticks and spent bullet casings. (I wasn't to know those were WWII surplus ammunition casings) and talking about things like The Tomorrow People back then. I had no idea he was hinting about the Proffwyd line.
Wonder if Taid would be proud that I grew up to be a writer? Or a computer geek with friends from all over the world? Or a Klingon language fan?
Or a Proffwyd warlock?
Taid showing me magnets. I remember that so clearly. I'd never imagined anything like it. Metals that pull at one another, and stick together like something's keeping them from separating. It had to be magic!
I remember Lon Ddwr, and walking along with Taid, and falling asleep with his coat wrapped around me as he carried my little frame home, and getting sunburned, and this teenage girl called Lydia, and falling in love with the actress Ayesha, and being amazed and delighted to see my first black and Asian people - "O brave new world, that has such people in't" and all that. Their beautiful faces and skin. Their smiles. The joy of moving in to a brand new place, and all the possibilities that they could see.
Those little moments, I miss.
Learning Latin, and French, and falling in love for the first time, and missing someone who went away forever. Those, too.
Glyn Owens. I miss him. It must be, what thirty years. He was unforgettable.
And some memories I do not miss, because they are with me always. The Big Hat Man, from my childhood. The skeletal form that loomed over my bed, with the long, bony hand descending towards me. I must have been only a few months, and Death paid a family visit to look at the newcomer to the Clan.
(Which is why, when I draw the Death card in a Tarot spread, I always say "Hello, old friend.")
I miss those few moments of love in my life. Like watching the Apollo 11 landing. Like little brass candlesticks, and red genie bottles, and not pointing at rainbows in case they went away, and being able to say "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll - Llantysiliogogogoch" for the first time, and my first pocket calculator, and getting a Swiss Army Knife at 16 (how very Klingon Rite of Ascension of me!).
But you can keep the bullying and the pain. That is something civilisation should learn to do without. Maybe we would be civilised if people who made a habit of bullying were branded and treated as pariahs, and those who loved and accepted, and who were honest, were given roles of prominence in society. But since we venerate bullies and trample peacemakers into the dirt, I guess that means we are not a real civilisation.
At least, I've never felt like I've been living in a civilised society. And that is something I cannot miss from my childhood, because I don't think I ever had that feeling to begin with.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-23 10:15 am (UTC)My Mum's home cooking too. All that lovely comfort food - home made pies and cakes.
Riding my bicycle. Making tents in the back garden out of old sheets. Curling up with an Enid Blyton book. Playing marbles on the drains in the school playground. Bag of mixed penny sweets.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-23 05:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-23 06:04 pm (UTC)My point is that, you seem to remember every slight, and keep hold of it. All of this happened a lifetime ago. Literally. This was before I was born.
Things that happen to you can either be just something that happened once, or it can be the thing you base your life on. You seem to have chosen the latter, and that means they've fucked you twice.
So, really...let it go. It's okay. They can't get you. You're not a child any more.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-24 10:12 am (UTC)