Le Quartier Etrange Et Merveilleux.

My family and I lived in a house just off the high street, by a used-car showroom.

We had a landline number that was easy to remember and a loft with loads of old crap in it.

Next door lived an old man who looked like a cartoon drawing of an old man – he was his own personal caricature, complete with big red nose, comedy glasses, string vest and braces combo, slippers, and broom-bristle moustache. He would stand outside by his front gate people-watching, and would give me information on the latest cricket scores when I walked past, on the way home from school.

Our neighbours on the other side of the house appeared hell-bent on regularly pumping out strong meaty cooking smells. They were a seemingly dysfunctional French family, who possessed very pale skin and had the social skills of people who guard lighthouses.

My best friend, Kingdom (“King”) Miller, lived across the street and we could communicate using walkie-talkies.

We played football in the street during the day and ate fish fingers and chips in the evening.

He also had two brothers: Isambard and Brunel. The Miller kids were named after an English engineer born in 1806, but sadly I can’t remember which one.

I learnt a lot from King. In particular how to be ‘economical with the truth’.

Whilst I was fond of eating pork pies, he was fond of telling them.

In many ways you could argue that he was my earliest inspiration.

His casual, slippery evasiveness wore off on me, and together we were like Bonnie and…well…like ‘Clyde and Clyde’, I guess. Or maybe more like ‘Bo’ and ‘Luke’ from the Dukes of Hazzard, who were early heroes of ours.

Apart from the supremely talented uber-champion Ferris Bueller, you would not find anyone as skilfully adept at faking illness to get out of going to school, or better at sweet talking adults into undeserved sympathy.

His father had walked out on the family when he was very young, so he had developed a nervous yet humorous insecurity about himself, which was in turn endearing, worrying, loveable.


On a lighter note, we had a golden rule that I still obey vigilantly:
“You do not tread on 3 consecutive drains in the pavement”.

To do so was deemed very bad luck indeed.

Think of it as you would any other social faux pas, like breaking a mirror, or walking under a ladder, or throwing a snowball at a passing car, or embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the family business.

2 drains = ok (some even say it’s good luck).
1 drain = no idea (no one cares about treading on 1 drain).
3 drains = bad fucking news.

It was something you just wouldn’t do if you could possibly avoid it.

There was also another rule, adopted by some (not me), that you weren’t supposed to step on the cracks in the pavement for fear that you’d slip through them to your death.

This became extremely tiresome, watching kids nervously hopscotch down the street, trying to avoid death, and I later found out it wasn’t true that you'd die anyway... when I stepped on a crack by accident myself one day, and survived with only minor bruising.