Leaving home

The circumstances around my leaving home played out over a couple of years. At school I was banned from German, Physics, chemistry, maths and biology for disrupting the class. At first they sat me at a table outside the headmaster's office where I was to write lines. This punishment had me writing the same phrase line after line.

I must not disrupt lessons

I must not disrupt lesson's

For page after page. Corporal punishment was common practice at my junior and middle school and I witnessed a few thrashings but never suffered one myself. By the time I was in high school culture had changed and teachers now were not to hit children. It was replaced by writing lines as though the repetition of the phrase would imprint itself into the student's consciousness but it was just boring.

I'd watch the coming and going of teachers doing the hidden stuff. Pupils were not generally privy to the telling off they received from the headmaster but I developed an understanding of how they interacted when they weren't teaching. They were people. I don't think I had ever considered how scary it can be when you're not one of the crowd. And it wasn't until I tried teaching my craft, my trade when I was 31 and I had a breakdown. I sometimes think back about my disruptive behaviour and failure to see how vulnerable the person at the front feels. For some it's water off a ducks back. They like being the centre of attention. But I would like to apologise to every teacher that I tested and used the crowd, played the crowd for no good reason. I did about three years of it at the university of central England, Wolverhampton University, Shrewsbury College and high Wycombe. When I went to university I already had experience and trade qualifications but I had seen that most of my favourite furniture makers did a few days a week teaching to support their business as everyone knows that the time spent on a piece is entirely dependent on budget and the better the work, the less money you make. So this was the plan. I'd get a degree so I could teach in the universities and colleges. I stuck it out for about three years before I had my first proper breakdown. I had put in place a four year plan, abandoned my first business and got qualified and passed interviews with ease but I didn't have what it takes. I spent a year as a technician after university and before teaching and I was brilliant in there. I salvaged numerous students and carried them through. I was embarrassingly good. I exposed the laziness of the other technicians and it was what I did that year that gave me all the teaching jobs. But that's another story.

After a while of this stupidity the art teacher Mrs Steele, a saviour to me said I never disrupted art lessons and I could stay quiet and focused in the art room instead. Here I developed my own little studio area and had the paintings out all the time. I now had 12 double art periods where I'd once had just one. It was sublime. I broke the system and landed in paradise. I've lost all my art from school years ago, along with all the Screecher comics. By now I had no chance of passing any o levels and back then the non academic kids could leave at Easter the idea being they might find apprenticeships in manual trades. But with my art teachers backing I was allowed to leave. It really was best for everyone. Yet she arranged it for me to return for the art exams and I would at least have one o level in art.

At home my dad had remarried Anne. She was about 30, 10 years younger than my dad. We hated each other. She laid down the ultimatum to my dad, either I left or she would. I had signed on and was waiting for my first giro to be able to get a room in the shared house with my brother and my freinds. There was a room I just needed to give the landlord a deposit.

The marriage was humiliating for me. My dad, his new wife, my brother and my sister were all sat at a table on the stage from where my dad would speak. I, however was on a table with my uncle Nigel, my mum's older brother and my sister's best friends family. I'd been chucked out. A cuckoo was on the nest and I was the chick she pushed out. I confronted my father as to why and he gave me some bullshit saying there wasn't enough room. I felt really insulted and to this day feel my piss boiling when I think about it. So I found a room with a table full of glasses, perhaps 200 of them. Little flutes and I got drunk to soften the blow of being kicked out of the family. It was boring. My dad gave me some notes and the child allowance book to get us through the fortnight of their honeymoon. I left immediately and bought a small sheet of acid, 50 black star on red background tiles and a half ounce of a seriously rich black hashish. We had a wild fortnight, through a party and had 50 or so friends there many of who bought or were given acid. It was mental! I never used to go in my dad's bedroom but that day I did. Rummaging through Anne's drawer I found four giro cheques that were mine. She had stolen and stashed them. Why? I don't know. She really wanted me to go but had stolen the cheques I needed to do so. On their return I had another last showdown where I had committed the crime of going through her stuff. I was now the thief. Obviously there was only one thief. I gathered my things together and left. It would be a few years before I saw my dad again and we never got over it really. The week before my grandma died lady dianna did too. This must have been ten years since I left home. I'd seen my dad maybe twice in that time. The night before the funeral I stayed at my dad's flat and it's the only time we slept under the same roof after leaving home. I wanted nothing from him and he was far from a generous man anyway. He'd shown his colours when I was given the choice of breaking up his new marriage or leaving. We went for a few pints the night before and I asked him why she had stolen my giros. She'd mistaken them for her own mail. Did she not see the name? Just bullshit. And why, at the wedding had I been placed with random acquaintances while the married couple and their family ate from their table on the stage. Oh it was simply a practical thing. Not enough space. He was still spinning the same bullshit narrative from ten years ago. His marriage had dissolved in less then a year after I left and he was now seriously drinking. So that's how I left home. Not yet 16 and went out into the world.

One last thing. On the day of my exams, 1982. My brother and comfy Chris had set off hitchhiking to Stonehenge festival. I was to do my exam and set off the next day with Pig I think. I walked through Gledhow Valley woods and halfway I found a dry patch between two big beech trees. To this day I regret my decision but I couldn't face going back to the school. I missed the chance Mrs Steele had fought for me to have and I still feel bad for letting her down. Years later I did manage to get a message back to her to thank her for all she did for me and apologised for letting her down. I let her know that I had enjoyed my life working in the creative industries and perhaps without her I never would have.

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