Page 88 - Exile-ebook

88 AN EXILE OF THE MIND TIDDLERS IN A JAM JAR 89

Conkers was a very popular game. The Wigston countryside was a welcome change from the city.

At home our ears were auto- There are not many empty spaces twice my weight singled me out following day, as the tender-arsed
matically tuned to the radio for in a child’s mind. for bullying. He waited daily at the karate kid victoriously entered the
Journey Into Space and The Goon At school small bottles of milk school gate to pounce with bared school grounds.
Show. The Goon characters could were doled out, curdled nauseous by teeth. I studied Samurai battle Digging under sofa cushions we
easily have been mistaken for aliens their proximity to hot radiators and skills from books in the library and found coins for the fourpenny flicks
from the Journey into Space series. reluctantly consumed as food-scarce practiced martial arts in the dojo at Flea Alley on Saturday afternoons
They would change radio forever. rationing dragged on. Hungry boys of our yard with my battle-scarred to watch Flash Gordon and The
When I was eight years old a sat at long benches with a teacher at brother. True to form the bully leapt Adventures of Tarzan. We drank
full-throated voice burst from the the prow. A grim figurehead to guide from behind the gates for the kill. Tizer, and Dandelion and Burdock
radio. I sat transfixed as I listened his charges in the sea of mashed Incredulously I watched his soft drinks from Codd’s soda bottles
in spellbound rapture to an aria potatoes, overcooked vegies and blurred shape flip arse up as his nose kept fizzy tight with glass ball
from Pagliacci. My parents were fatty meat. Much improved when ploughed the asphalt. I was given stoppers.
perplexed by this sound they had rationing ended and I embraced my ‘six of the best’ by the headmaster We played Postman’s Knock, a
no ears for. And so my love of opera teenage years. and an extra one for knucklehead’s cheeky form of ‘Spin the Bottle’; with
was born. I devoured everything ever At the school I was reluctantly broken nose. It was worth it to the girl group hidden, the boy group
composed in this wonderful genre. attending, a gobbin thug of a boy behold a Red Sea parting of boys the spun the bottle. The lucky winner