Early Years
I was born in Farnborough Hospital, Biggin Hill, Kent on the 4th of September in 1987. This makes me a Virgo (and in the Chinese calendar, I was born in the year of the rabbit).
I was born the first child of Neil, a car salesman and Loraine, a nurse. I was also the first grandchild on both sides of the family, making me a very special addition. My grandparents were Roy and Gillian (Jill) Dimond, my mother's parents, and Vera McKay, my dad's mum. My dad's father, and my namesake, unfortunately died a month before I was born. My other grandfather died when I was about five, but I don't really remember much about it.
We lived at 48, Swievelands Rd, Biggin Hill, Kent, TN16 3QT. I don't really have any information from my early years, owing to a lack of video cameras and, for some unknown reason, we appear to be completely devoid of photographs (that my mum wishes people to see, anyway)! My mum however, happens to have a little blue book by the name of the "Child Health Record" Book, which contains a wealth of odd (and overall, quite useless) information. I don't know who thought that this book would ever be useful when it was printed, but unless you really need to know how long your gestation period in the womb was (mine was 40 weeks, or so the book tells me), it's pretty pointless. Anyway, from this book, I have managed to uncover the following irrelevant facts about me...
My Child's NHS Number is... JWDYT 106
My head circumference at birth was... 35.5 cm...it's much bigger now!
I was 50cm long and 3.080kg when I was born,
And I was transferred to a health visitor on the 13th of September
My weight on transfer to this health visitor was 6lb 12oz
Also, I was never admitted to a "Special Care Unit", which, in my opinion, must be a good thing.
In the period from my birth to the 3rd of April 1990 (when I would have been 2 years of age), I gained 9.52kg, and weighed 12.600 kg (or 1 stone 13lb and 12oz)
This book does have its advantages though. I have learned that I am immune (hopefully) to diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella and poliomyelitis. (How on earth did I still manage to catch scarlet fever last year?)
Some other interesting things recorded in the little blue book:
I first smiled at 6 weeks old
Slept through the night ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
In the period from my birth to the 3rd of April 1990 (when I would have been 2 years of age), I gained 9.52kg, and weighed 12.600 kg (or 1 stone 13lb and 12oz)
This book does have its advantages though. I have learned that I am immune (hopefully) to diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella and poliomyelitis. (How on earth did I still manage to catch scarlet fever last year?)
Some other interesting things recorded in the little blue book:
I first smiled at 6 weeks old
Slept through the night for the first time at 4 weeks
Said my first word at 11 months old (don't know what it was, but my parents assure me that it wasn't offensive)
Stood up at 8 months, and walked unaided at 141/2 months
Managed to put 2 to 3 words together at the age of 18 months.
Should I be ashamed of this? I don't know! I'm not sure if I started talking later then everyone else did, but if I did, I'm sure I've more than made up for it by now.
I could recognise and name three colours by 15 months of age, and I could bounce a ball by then as well (an early sporting achievement).
Apparently, I first drew a circle at the age of 15 months (little did my parents know that it was supposed to be a cat)
I don't exactly know how stupid the NHS believe some parents to be, but their little blue book also contains the following gem of a question...
Have you checked that your child cannot fall out of the windows?
The book also chooses to point out the fact that "Many household fluids and cleaning materials are poisonous". And you thought drinking the bleach was a good idea...
I never had to take "Supportive Drugs" (whatever that means), which I think was the reason I loved the taste of the banana-flavoured Calpol. I think my body was merely craving some kind of man-made, synthetic, calming substance (and with a banana flavour, it was irresistible).
As soon as I started to gain recognition as a legend within the family, and learned to bounce a ball, name three colours, and draw a cat-circle, my brother James was born, on the 14th of December 1988, and again, I have no recollection of this event (selective memory loss?)
About a year before I was born, my parents came across an abandoned dog under some railway arches. He was named "Archie", as the level of wit that my parents possessed did not allow for a better standard of title for the new animal. (My mother had the propensity for humour, it turns out, as she wanted to call the dog Arthur, because he had arfa-white face and arfa-black face. The wit in my family never ceases to amaze me...)
Soon after my brother was born, I was deported to a play-school in Biggin Hill. It was here that I formed my first friendships, according to my mum. Again, I remember nothing.
I can only remember snatches of things from my early years... I can remember my brother falling into the pond in my garden, I can remember bits of the inferno that my dad and granddad created whilst cooking a barbecue in our garden, I can remember my brother shaving his tongue, but I don't recall whether it was my idea for him to do it, or his... (selective memory strikes again...)
At the age of four, we moved into High Beech Glade, in St. Leonards-on-Sea. This was the first time I had my own bedroom, and this new home afforded me many new and welcome opportunities, such as learning to ride a bike. The road was pretty deserted when we moved in, but it didn't stay that way for long, so we moved to Battle, which is how I have come to live where I do.
Snapshots
I can only really remember one thing (in detail) from High Beech Glade, and I think the sheer pain of it was the reason for this. This incident has left me with a lingering fear of any stinging creatures, one which I cannot escape!
I used to live two doors away from a kid called Chris, but I didn't really know him all that well at the time (he now goes to my secondary school). Anyway, at the end of the road where I lived, there were some building developments going on (and they are finished now, I believe). About twenty feet square at the end of these newly half-built houses consisted of angry-looking gorse bushes.
Me, Seth, and my brother James went up to the end of the road to meet Chris, who was gingerly prodding the gorse bushes with a length of broom handle. We (slowly) ambled up to the gorse bushes, blissfully unaware of the imminent danger that we were in. It then became apparent that Chris was systematically destroying a wasps' nest with the broom handle. Only ten at the time, we stood and watched, whilst Seth helped to throw rocks and bits of wood into the nest. Suddenly, a huge black cloud of angry buzzing creatures rose into the air. All of us ran, as fast as we could, back to my house. The wasps, furious that their home had been so thoughtlessly destroyed, didn't stop chasing us until two hundred metres down the road. A joke at the time, we decided to finish the nest off, properly. Walking back to the top of the road, laughing and joking, talking and chatting, we had won. Chris (or rather his mum) decided to make him leave our war against the wasps, so we decided to go on without him. I never realised how lucky Chris was to have a mum who made his dinner that early! So, Chris-less, we pressed on. Rounding the corner, to face the gorse bushes, I suddenly saw (and heard) a buzzing shadow, for the split second before my eye burned and closed up. I couldn't believe the pain I was in, and ran, yelling and retching with the pain, back down the road to return to my house, dimly aware of Seth alongside me, running with the same velocity. I cleared the steps to my house, rang the doorbell for what seemed like an age, and pushed past my mum into the house, only to be stopped by my dad hitting me with a Friday-Ad around the head. The pain was so great; I couldn't help being sick. My mum took me into the kitchen, and dabbed around my eye with a cotton wool pad soaked in vinegar.
My dad then apologised for his indisputable lack of concern, and proceeded to explain, that his apparent cruelty stemmed from a morbid fear of wasps, he claimed that the beating with the Friday-Ad was his attempt to remove the offending beast from my face! As the wasp injected it's poison into my eye, I had closed my eye, and this had made the wasp's wing get caught between my eyelids. On the journey back to my house, the wasp had been stinging all over my face in a vain attempt to free itself. I received a total of eleven stings around my right eye, and couldn't see very well that night.
The next morning, when I woke up, my vision in that eye was blurry, but not too bad. When I looked in the mirror, my eye had almost completely closed up, and had taken on an Oriental appearance. When asked if I still wanted to go to school, I said that I did (being a model student and all...), and got laughed at all day for the way I looked!
Ever since that fateful day, I have run from any kind of flying, stinging creature. Wasps are evil. At least if a bee stings you, you have the satisfaction of knowing it will die for its sin. Wasps don't stop...
