Back Story Page 0,46

the long run, you’re fucked whatever you invest in. I don’t see him as often as I’d like, but when I do we generally go to the pub to drink and talk about real ale. We both enjoy that. Deal with it.

The other major change our family underwent while I was at New College School was Grandpa dying. I was ten. In some ways, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It’s definitely the worst thing that ever happened to him.

He was relatively old – 73, I think – which is about par for a death in the mid 1980s, I believe. Not strictly a tragedy, anyway. And I think he’d had a happy life. His marriage was incredibly happy and he loved his daughter and grandchildren very much. He was also properly and unselfconsciously religious which, as a muddle-headed agnostic, I rather envy.

We were very close and I officially considered him the best person in the world. I remember he was a bit fat and he wore black-framed glasses. I remember that he smoked Silk Cut and would send me upstairs to fetch a new packet from a cupboard in which he had also secreted Lindt chocolate animals. I remember that he made very good chips and swam in the sea with a slow, confident crawl. I remember that he was a big fan of Minder. But mainly I remember a feeling of being loved by someone kind and special, who knew that the important things in life were fish and chips, ice cream and the seaside. Had he lived another ten years or so, I would have undoubtedly seen him differently, he wouldn’t have remained perfect in my eyes – no human could. But I would like to have known him with an older brain.

I cried for hours when I heard the news. I went over the awfulness of it hundreds of times and instinctively wrung grief out of myself. It was the most emotionally healthy thing I’ve ever done in my life and, as a result, saddened and oddly aged though I remained as a result, I genuinely came to terms with his death. What worries me about this is that I never cry these days. I lost the ability at some point in my late teens which makes me fear that I’m now emotionally unfused. Or perhaps it’s just because nothing as bad as that has happened to me since?

How ridiculous is it – how absurdly blessed am I – that the death of my grandfather in the middle of my childhood is the worst single event in my life? I’ve had a tremendous run of luck for which I am enormously grateful, but I’m also enormously fearful of it running out.

Friends: I was all right for friends – it wasn’t just aqua-Slater. In fact, I made some very good ones. I’m still in touch with some of the other boys from Form VI, and a few of them are proper friends – people you have things in common with other than your past.

Obviously I didn’t get together and play football with Leo, Ed and Harry. Neither did we dress up and pretend to be The Professionals. Although I’d quite like to do that now, which I must remember the next time I see them. I’d reached the stage where we mostly just sat around and played board games, which wasn’t as exciting as watching Knight Rider – but unfortunately Knight Rider was only on for an hour a week. That’s partly why I was so resentful when my parents complained that I spent ‘all my time’ watching it.

Home: We had dry rot. If you’ve ever had anything to do with dry rot, I know that will have got your attention. ‘Bloody hell, dry rot!’ you’ll be saying like someone with a bad back hearing about a bad back. (If, like me, you’ve had a life blighted by both dry rot and a bad back, my God you must be enjoying this book.) If not, let me tell you, dry rot is a nightmare. It is literally the worst sort of rot.

We had moved house to a place round the corner which was definitely better but in a much worse state of repair. My brother was changing from an incredibly unruly baby, who seemed never to sleep, into a fearless toddler. As a result of having to eradicate the dry rot, my parents were short of money, which worried me. It felt