Empty me a head by Jan Needle
A student who'll take anyone for a drink - my son Wilf Writers block – choose your own position for the apostrophe – is a condition I’ve never suffered from. I started scrawling words on bits of paper almost before I could hold a pencil, and was speedy from the word go. When I went to Church Street Primary School, in Portsmouth (now called Charles Dickens, because he was born just down the road, not because he went there), it was quickly discovered that I could write things with my eyes closed, so to speak. I couldn’t do much else, admittedly. I couldn’t even pee very high up the wall in the lavatory, which was outside, of course, and in fact was the back wall of the rope-walk. I certainly couldn’t do sums or hold a cricket bat, or anything hard like that. But if you wanted words, I was your man. It didn’t exactly get me into grammar school, which my parents knew was pretty damned important for a Portsmouth slum kid, but it helped. ...