Open Writing

I was a gifted child. From birth, nay, even before that, Mother Nature in all her munificence bestowed upon me inbred talents which were to make mere mortals gaze and gasp in wonder. I outshone the plebeian herds.

“How does he do it?” was the question often asked by all who knew me. It was not that the physical power of all creation had merely smiled upon me. I suspect it was more of a cynical sneer. I was truly blessed. But with what?

To begin with, I ought not to be here at all. My creation wasn’t planned. I can imagine that my forthcoming presence must have been a shock to my parents, since they had been married some fourteen years with no previous issue.

I do suspect that as my early years went by the question often asked would have been, “Where did we go wrong?” for it should be pointed out that there was a great abundance of parental love and devotion bestowed upon me, but it was insufficient to readjust one of Nature’s practical jokes.

For starters, I was born on a Friday the thirteenth. My father maintained that I was born on the twelfth, but with my history I reckon it was the unlucky side of that hour. As if that wasn’t sufficient enough an omen, one of the buildings at the rear of our house caught fire and the owner perished. It was a case of one in -- one out, or two out, depending on how you look at it.

Then there’s another thing. I was born scissor-legged. Ever seen a pair of folding scissors? My left leg was knock-kneed, and it wasn’t until I was thirty-six years of age, when a mis-handled broken leg requiring a bone graft helped rectify the abnormality. Talk about doing things the hard way. Well, I was a late developer.

On the subject of legs, mine in their formative years were sprouting like weeds. They weren’t green, but they were thin. So was the rest of me, except for my head. That was thick. “Hey, ain’t you a big lad for your age? ‘Have you got ‘oss-muck in your booits?” I learned all he quips at a very young age. I have been told in later years that I resembled a young colt; my legs didn’t seem to belong to me. I had little control over them. They bent, buckled, sagged and wobbled. Time and sheer cussed determination brought them under control. I was a stubborn cuss.

“Oo, ‘asn’t ‘e got rosy cheeks? They’re like two red apples,” people would exclaim. They were right, but what wasn’t known was the reason. I had too many red cells in my blood -- still have. In those days, however, if I hadn’t suffered periodic nose bleeds, I would probably have seized up. Imagine rinsing soap from your face after washing in the kitchen sink -- it was the only one we had -- then opening your eyes to find your hands full of blood -- yours. “Don’t get it on t’towill. It’ll iron-mould. Panic in the household, save the towel. “Let ‘im bleed a bit. It’ll sap ‘is strength an’ calm ‘im daahn.” What was I supposed to do? Run around outside until I dried?

Schoolyard fights and sportsfield activities reduced the blood pressure from time to time. I preserved the towels over the years. Penknives helped. Like most lads, I gloried in a new penknife. I owned many throughout my early years, and again I can state in all honesty that each one was, as if by tradition, dutifully anointed or blooded with my life flow. Matters in that respect are controlled in a more civilised manner. I’m tapped off periodically, somewhat like a rubber tree. “Stop the flow,” is the cry, “he’s looking pale enough!”

Mind, it could have been over for me quite early in my life. It was the big striped humbug that did it, the way it lodged itself in my gullet. I don’t remember the event too clearly -- it was a long time ago, but I was informed later that the quick action of an uncle saved me. He had me up by the heels, delivered a sharp blow between my shoulder blades, and out shot the humbug. My purple features then returned to their regular ruddy glow. I don’t remember being given the humbug back. Wonder who got it?

After that my health record was plain sailing: croup, measles, mumps and chicken pox, all in a row, but that was par for the course in those days. I missed out on diphtheria and scarlet fever but contracted nits in lieu, more than once, and more calamities were to follow.

My first attendance at school was a hectic affair for all concerned. I didn’t want to go. My mother got me to the schoolyard gates. How, I don’t remember, but she had her way. She usually did where I was concerned. I was literally handed over to the teacher, poor woman. I can still see her beige stockings besmirched with dirt from my boots. Yes, I wore boots. “They ‘help to strengthen ‘is ankles you know.” The teacher would have vouched for that. She left to get married shortly after that. Perhaps I was the last straw. However, when playtime came on that first day, I went back home. I thought that was it. My mother showed me the error of my ways.

After that first disturbing episode all fiery resistance vanished. I docilely attended school each day, regularly and obediently, eventually gaining certificates for unbroken attendance throughout the school year. Well, I said I was gifted.

As time passed by I became more convinced that there had been some mullakin’, califudgin’ and downright slupperin’ neglect on the creative assembly line when I was under construction. How was it, I would wonder, that my school associates each had eight fingers and two thumbs, whilst I was lumbered with ten thumbs, not on each hand I will admit, but they might just as well have been. Ham-fisted Adam, that was me.

There was one lesson called ‘handwork.’ I suppose today it would be ‘mental coordination of artistic design with creative assembly of modules,’ much more expressive in delivery than ‘handwork,’ but it’s on similar lines.

Anyway, on that occasion I started off with a drawing which was later to be painted. It was school open day, and parents were milling around buttonholing teachers wanting to know why their precious kiddie-winks weren’t vying with Albert Einstein. We were seven years old at the time. “Paint the drawing with clean water,” I was instructed by the master. He was then cornered by one of the aforementioned parents, a mother, who was also the mother of all windbags, or so it seemed to me at the time, since she blathered on and on so much that my artistic medium dried out, and again I wet it all over. It dried out once more, yet Madam Claptrap was still wittering on, so the paper again received a dowsing. Oh dear, saturation point had been reached. The medium could take no more. Its moral fibre yielded, and the whole disintegrated. Alas, the teacher died shortly afterwards, but I still refuse to take the blame, even if I did contribute towards a wreath.

Next I was tried with sheet pewter. The exercise was to emboss a design onto a section of pewter and then fill the indentations with melted beeswax. Wonder of wonders, I didn’t puncture the metal more than twice and actually reached the stage of filling its pattern with runny beeswax. This entailed the use of a Bunsen burner, at which juncture my attention was momentarily distracted -- probably because I was poking my nose into someone else’s affairs -- and when I again looked at my handiwork it had changed state entirely. Then it was a molten mess all around the Bunsen burner, whilst my tweezers held the merest fragment of its former self.

“Give him some copper sheet. Let him shape a dish. Besides, it’s thicker than pewter. He won’t bust that so readily.” I can hear the teachers saying it. How wrong they were. A hammer was involved, and Thor Junior quickly broke through the metal, over enthusiastic perhaps!

Then there was woodwork. Here I was very generous in application. All my channel joints and mortises were two sizes too big for their tenons. Maybe I thought they would grow to fit. Meantime, nails and liberal dollops of glue were needed to get my constructions to hold together.

At the commencement of each woodworking lesson -- ‘woodworking’ now, no longer ‘handwork’, we were twelve years old -- the teacher would hand out steel scribe-awls,
a cutting edge at one end and a sharp point at the other end. These were collected in at the end of the period. Aimless Herbert here handed mine over one time rather too enthusiastically, stabbing the teacher’s thumb in the process. I adopted my natural look -- gormless -- and he spluttered but kept his hands off my throat. Strange, I never knew up to that time just how bloodshot the teacher’s eyes were!

At last my long-suffering body of teachers in all their wisdom located a medium that I could not break, neither in its constituent parts nor in its assembled entirety -- concrete. I, along with other classmates, was taught how to mix and lay the stuff. We were thirteen years of age, almost men. It was highly educational and we, in all probability, were considered suitable only for such employment. Over the many years since, I have repeated the process successfully and have never bent, buckled or busted the stuff, whilst a neat and tidy fit has always been tamped home.

Smug and snug, that’s me and concrete. We stick together!