Biography
A story of my perspective on my past
1.
I grew up in a small village in Cambridgeshire, with a population of approximately 1300, which was somehow considered the main central hub of a group of small villages. Life and concerns were parochial, drama’s teacup sized, and the feel perennially bucolic.
2.
I grew up in the shadow of a castle, its yellowed gatehouse looming, its inhabitants wandering down to the village below in louche packs where they would spread coin amongst the locals with an air of unassailable arrogance.
3.
I grew up in a village caught up in dreams of the past. The hangover of history filled its streets and the mouths of the people who lived there. This was a place where things had happened. This was a place written about in Important Places™. This was a place that had always been. Or that had been long enough.
4.
I grew up in a village where nothing happened. Where an event could only be noteworthy in comparison to the empty void of other memorable moments. Where we drifted in dull isolation along empty corridors, moving towards nothing.
5.
I grew up in a bustling place where a tide of suited men and women washed in and out with the rise and fall of the sun, gathering up their energy each night before depositing it miles away during the hours of nine-to-five. Where our main export was brainpower. Was the knowledge of how to tie a full Windsor knot in your tie. Was a sense of privilege that only our days were spent in the smog and grime of city life.
6.
I grew up in a drunkard’s paradise. Pubs seemed to sprout like weeds in amongst the handful of other shops. An inexplicable number of places to wet one’s whistle clamored for our attention. The lone taxi driver propped himself by a bar, ordering pints while waiting for calls that rarely came. The lone policeman was at another pub, thinking about calling him.
7.
I grew up in a village dominated by its proximity to other places, only notable in its relationship to more significant towns and cities. Directions were dominated by references to places of more import, that would distract you with their existence so that you forgot about what you were originally asking. It was a village that, like so many others, existed only in the cracks between relevance and history.
8.
I grew up in a place of beauty that I could not appreciate because all I saw was beauty. I grew up cushioned by the kindness of flowers and trees, with rabbits and squirrels and pheasants and the cooing of mourning doves wrapped around me like a blanket, protecting me from the harsh realities of the world.
9.
I grew up cut off from reality. I was raised in a bucolic fantasy, in a place caught up in the narrative England sells to tourists. I grew up in a place intentionally unaware of its privilege, that had purposefully cut itself off from the rest of the world, an amputated vestigial backwater of existence.
10.
I grew up between two hills, sheltered by blunt mounds of earth, crooked in the elbow of a river that meandered along, careful to make no sudden moves. I grew up along a road that curled up to caution drivers. I grew up where everything was protected, including me.
11.
I grew up surrounded on all sides by fields of rapeseed. The summers were yellow, the hills paint-can splashed by flowers that seemed to gather up a year’s-worth of sunlight and beam it back to the heavens. Pollen clogged the air all around us. In the autumn, all the flowers were gone, everything harvested, and the skies filled with smoke as the stubble was set ablaze.
12.
I grew up living the same week on repeat. The same year over and over. I grew up safe. I grew up bored. I grew up not realizing the differences and similarities between the two, not knowing other ways to be raised, trapped in the bubble of childhood, in my lack of awareness of what lay over the next hill, and the hill after that. I grew up to resent that. I grew up to appreciate it.
13.
I grew up in a village that was little more than an appendage to a school, that was dominated by the rhythms and tides of school life. A village that echoed with the shouts of children on football fields, on cricket lawns, on tennis courts. A village that catered to wealthy kids descending on shops for snacks and sneaked cigarettes. I grew up attending that school.
14.
I grew up in a village with a school sutured onto it, where farmers watched the kids and their commuter parents roll in and out with a vague sense of resentment. Where farmers struggled to carve out their own spaces, grounded in the reality of village life—its real struggles and its real work—free from the bucolic nonsense that filled the heads of these migratory interlopers.
15.
I grew up in a place that was uniquely and only itself, that was nestled in history no one else could claim, that had forged a path through time and come out the victor. A place that was soft and kind and beautiful.
16.
I grew up in a carbon copy of a carbon copy, a xeroxed ideal of what a quaint village should be. A place caught up in its own mythmaking and utterly out of touch with what it really was: almost nothing at all.
17.
I grew up impossibly lucky, implausibly protected. I grew up with the crueler edges of life hidden away. So I could believe in kindness, in goodness, so I could have those ideas entrenched in me before the rest of the world stole them away.
Thank you for reading Something’s a Little Off. If you’re interested in sampling a few other stories, and reading an excerpt of my upcoming novella, why not check out the sampler linked to here?