Childhood memories
The very first one: standing by the front door, looking at the paisley pattern in the frosted glass, and thinking: ‘I will always remember this’. I still can, over 40 years later. Most of my memories are traumatic. Pissing in my pants just before I acted as Noddy on TV. They had to be changed in seconds. Cutting my thumb as I ran my hand along the fence while riding my bicycle, but proudly not crying when I present the bloody hand to my mother for fixing. Jumping off the garage roof with my friends and my sister and her friends – that rush as you leap off - and pick up speed so quickly. The tree we climbed to get there had triangular-shaped branch ends. Falling into a pit filled with burning rubbish. Stumbling around screaming as the skin on the soles of my feet disappeared. The gardener rescued me. Being driven around in a pram for weeks, until my feet healed, which was intensely embarrassing. Deciding that I didn’t want my friends to play with my new gun at my birthday, and having it taken away by my parents, who then gave it to my friends. Cutting out a face from a block of wood, painting it, and giving it to my father for his birthday. He beat me for damaging his prized wood as I sawed off the block. Being hit by a car as I crossed the road to my house. Landing breathless in the driveway. The x-rays reveal no damage. Being broken into, my aunt wouldn’t let her handbag go as it went through the window. The cop dogs couldn’t follow the scent, we had tobacco on the lawn. The family pet vomiting blood on the carpet, Fluffy had to be put down. Drinking the milk left on the doorway when I got home from school before my mother got home from work. Sitting on the backseat of the volksie while blood spread from a cut on my backside. I had fallen into a pit and cut my ass on the way down. My mother didn’t believe I was hurt until my sister told her the car seat was filled with blood. Screaming as the doctor sewed up my butt before the anaesthetic took full effect. Running in terror from a bullterrier at a friend’s party, falling as I turned around to face the dog and hitting my head on a wall. My father called the lump an egg. Seeing my father cut his beard into the basin, chuckling, leaving the hairs there for my mother to clean up. Proudly showing my father my erection on the porch, and being heavily scolded. ‘Running away’ from home after our parents discovered our provisions under our bed – torch, food, clothes, carefully packed into bags. Reading crap comics filled Dennis the Menace and Billy Bunter. Being beaten with a hairbrush by my mother; my father only ever hit me when I was bust for shoplifting as a teen. Hoarding a piece of biltong given to me by my grandmother, so that it lasted longer than my sister’s, in the back of a station-wagon. Oupa was a stinking whisky alcoholic who would throw his piss out as we drove and it splattered along the side of the car. We would steal his ground-up powdered biltong, he had false teeth. Being caught playing doctor in the cupboard, we were inserting ballpoint pens into each other’s bums. Breaking a frog’s legs, I can still remember the tiny snapping sound it made. Dropping an aunt’s poodle off the porch. It broke its leg. I denied any responsibility, my first big lie. Putting a hamster in my pocket, catching its skin as I zipped up the pocket. The hamster was cut from the jacket and taken to the vet, anaesthetized in a plastic tube with gas, cut from the zip, stitched. Shooting countless hundreds of small birds in sheer boredom. Shooting my parent’s friend’s neck with my pellet gun as they had drinks in the garden. My gun was confiscated for weeks. The horror as the lights blacking-out during my parents’ reading of Lord of the Rings, just as the line ‘and the lights went dim’ was read. Clutching a tennis ball in my hand as we crossed the Limpopo, thinking how I would teach my new schoolmates how to play stingers in South Africa. They already knew how to.



