I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey (18 page)

‘I'm sorry, there's nothing more we can do.' We both lowered our heads. Game over. Who says computer games dull the imagination?

Checking in the drawer, I saw that I'd run out of the bumper pack of batteries that Dad had bought me as a congratulations for finishing my exams. Duracell? No! Dur-a-sell me, a cheap knock-off battery pack from the market. Thanks, Dad! The famous Duracell bunny jingle played in my head, ‘They go on . . . and on . . . aaaand stop working.' So I decided to push my luck, take my life into my own hands, and try to tiptoe upstairs and turn on our family computer.

This was the last house I ever lived in with my parents. It was our big place in Balham near the Tube station, next door to Fola. Having chased the old couple downstairs out, we now had the run of the whole place – it had three floors, four bedrooms and two reception rooms. Plenty of places to hide, you might think, but you'd be wrong. The house was Mum's undisputed territory. The kids were grudgingly tolerated at best so long as we didn't get in her way. Privacy was an English word that got lost in translation for my parents. ‘Privacy! What is that? You want privacy? Buy your own house!'

We had one phone and it took pride of place in the hallway. And, aged eighteen, I still couldn't even use it without being listened to disapprovingly. On the rare occasion when someone phoned me, I would have to be very quick. ‘Uh, hi! I can't talk for long . . . because Dad is staring at me!' He didn't understand that if they call you then they are the ones who pay for the call. Well, he did understand that but was just generally distrustful of the kids touching anything that could potentially cost him money.

Once my sister Cordelia made the grave error of actually dialling a number (maybe to see if the phone worked) and the next day Dad installed a lock on the dial. However the Amos kids were pretty smart and those of you old enough to remember the old rotary dialling phones will recall that you could dial a number by tapping the tone dialler up and down really quickly. So if you wanted to dial a nine you'd tap it up and down nine times and then give it a second before starting in on tapping out the second digit. At the end of the month Dad got the bill and he was like ‘Ay! Ay! Who's been using the phone?'

‘We don't know! You installed the lock remember?' the kids would reply smugly and Dad would look at his wife with a weary eye and mutter to himself. Amos phone hackers!

When Dad was out at work, which was pretty much all the time, Mum would patrol the house like a brave lioness patrolling the Serengeti, sniffing the air and cocking her ears to make sure there was no one up to any ‘nonsense' in the house, as she put it. You had to keep your ears open in case the lioness was on the prowl. The way Mum could creep, stalk and then pounce on the unsuspecting young gazelle was like something out of a David Attenborough wildlife documentary. I used to think she had padded feet because you could never hear her coming.

That was odd because even though we had carpets, the stairs did creak. And not a gentle subtle creak, no. We lived in a horrendous Hammer house of horrors and the creaking was so loud that you could hear it not only from outside, but across the road too. Why the neighbours hadn't complained to the council remains a mystery to me. Maybe there had been complaints that I didn't know about. Councillors were probably used to getting calls saying, ‘That house party over there is too loud! Turn it down!' but maybe ‘That house over there is too loud. Knock it down!' would just generate confusion. I used to think the house was haunted and I remember lying awake at night, terrified of the dark, with all the sounds of the house giving me nightmares. I asked if I could have a night-light.

‘No. Who is paying for the electricity? When you get a job you can have a night-light.'

I couldn't fart in that house without the whole place vibrating like the inside of a guitar echo chamber. If I was returning very late from a night out I had to tiptoe backwards up the stairs so that if I was caught I'd say I was simply going to check that the front door was locked. In all my flash gear.

Now I have big feet and I'm a big man and so tiptoeing isn't even that easy a task for me, but I was feeling bold that day. I didn't think twice about the consequences. There was nobody upstairs. What's the worst that could happen? No sooner had I pushed the floppy disk in with my finger than I heard a voice. That voice. A voice I've heard call out my name in the exact same disappointed and angry tone for eighteen years. Shit! Caught red-handed. My only chance was that technology wasn't fast in those days. I had about six minutes until the game loaded.

‘Stephen! What are you doing up there? . . . Well?'

I struggled to find the right words, but still nothing came out. As I slowly turned around, there she was in all her raging glory.

‘I was gonna work on my CV!' Bloody hell! Where did that come from? That's one to go in the Rolodex of swift comebacks for use at another time.

There was definitely a shift of gear. Mum's face softened.

“Your CV? Well, I don't think you'll be needing that. Not just yet at least.'

Mum came and sat next to me. Just to the side of the computer and a bit too close for comfort. I tried to angle my wiry teenage body, both to hide the screen and position myself into something resembling the sprinter's starter position (in case I had to make a quick getaway). Any minute now, the screen is going to come to life with
DISC READY
, revealing the logo of the jungle monkey game.

‘What do you mean, Mum?' I asked.

‘You have a letter,' she replied with a broad grin. Sure enough in her hand she had a letter. ‘Here.' She passed it to me. ‘Open it.'

I looked at the front of the envelope; although it was definitely addressed to me, it was already open. I took pleasure in knowing that all my personal mail was in fact delivered to my mate's house down the road. I bit my tongue, but I wanted to shout at her, ‘Ha! I win in the end, sucker!'

To keep the peace, as usual, I removed the letter, making no mention of the fact that my privacy had once again been violated. Mum looked eager: clearly it must be something good.

It was from Westminster Polytechnic. I read it.

‘Read it out loud, I want to hear,' Mum said. Again, I bit my tongue and did as she requested.

‘“In light of your excellent interview, we are pleased to offer you a place on the criminal justice law degree upon you achieving two Cs and one D grade.'

‘Hurrah, and they are what you have been predicted as well! We will have a lawyer in the family. Praise be to God for allowing my genes to come through.
Openi fu oluwa
. Praise be to God!'

‘What do you mean allowing
your
genes to come through?'

‘Ah! Your father! This morning when we read the letter together he said, “With a criminal law degree Stephen could have a good career at the Citizen's Advice Bureau!” Can you believe it? No, you will be a lawyer! Sometimes I think that your father's head is not correct.
Biwon shiman shine ei
. That's how he does it!'

I smiled as she hugged me. Lost in her ample bosom, I thought that this could be the start of something new, my golden ticket out of here. I didn't care if it was a degree in criminal law or animal husbandry. It meant I could move out! Go to live in a hall of residence! Be independent! Even read my own letters first!

‘So, don't think about work for now. You will enter college and no job will interfere. The student grant will even cover our living expenses.' Before I could have a chance to digest those words the logo of ‘Donkey Kong' finally appeared on screen. Mum turned around and scolded me. ‘Ay! What are you doing wasting your life with this fantastical nonse—' But she caught herself midway through the sentence and swallowed her words. I'd never seen that happen before! I didn't even mind getting in trouble again because I wasn't going to need computer games to escape any more. My second life had already begun.

B
OTH
D
USTIN AND
I got into Westminster Poly and we moved into the same halls in Camden together as well. They were a dump by normal standards, but my standards were quite low so the leaky toilets and drab, cluttered surroundings didn't bother me at all. The rooms were tiny boxes big enough for a single bed, a sink and a desk. Everyone complained about them but for me – I was just pleased to have my very own room for the first time.

The students were from all different walks of life and some of them totally baffled me. I remember there was one really posh girl called Charlotte who lived down the corridor. She'd gone to Harrow but used to always wear dashikis and had dozens of bangles on her wrist. When she saw that I was living there she went and wrapped an African headscarf over her blonde hair and tried to make friends with me.

‘Hi, Stephen, I'm Charlotte. Wicked, yeah?' She offered me her fist to touch.

‘Why are you wearing that on your head?'

‘I got it over the summer holidays when I went to Malawi. The plight of starving African children just got to me so much that I had to do something about it. I got my parents to sponsor me to go there and build a bridge.'

‘That's nice. How does a bridge help feed the children?' That got her.

‘Oh, everything was organized by my school. I had to get water from a well with a bucket and everything.' I thought of Sunday and his lesson to me in
baffing
skills and smiled. ‘When I got there and saw these children looking up at me, I just felt so comfortable. Like I was coming home, you know? It changed me for ever. I may never wear Western clothes again.'

And then a month later she saw the film
Che!
, started smoking Café Crèmes and wearing a stupid beret. This was a girl who would take up any cause as long as she could wear a silly hat while doing it. Actually, the last time I saw her was a few years later in Brixton when she'd decided to really piss off her parents by becoming a squatter. She was wearing huge bomber jacket, had shaved off all her hair and was sitting by a huge sound system that was belting out dub music. She was trying to pet the feral squatter kids who were biting and scratching her back. How authentic! She must have been in heaven.

For me, being a student was an expensive business. Sure we got a grant. Sure we had accommodation provided. But that beer wasn't going to buy itself. As such, most people took whatever jobs they could get or face the stigma of being left out of the rounds at the student bar. To help me get by I took a job working at a supermarket in Camden. I went in at entry level and my job was to go around the car park and collect the trolleys. This may seem like the world's most futile and boring job. Collecting trolleys just so that shoppers could pick them up and disperse them again. And it was futile and boring. The only fun part was dangerously competing with my workmates to see how many trolleys we could collect together and then drive around like a caravan of rusty listing camels across the busy car park without crashing into a car, the wall or a pedestrian.

It was while working there that I got my first promotion. They promoted me to the shop floor so that at least I wouldn't have to freeze all day outside. It wasn't the champagne-popping experience it might have been – they made me the mince man. By which I don't mean that I stood behind the counter saying, ‘Oooh. I like your beef,' in the style of John Inman. No, I made the mince. I'm sure these days the supermarket holds itself to rigorous standards but back then it didn't. The way we made mince was to take the old cuts of beef, mince them up with some fat in a grinder, and for colour? Add blood. Yum! Then we'd sell the whole lot on a half-price special and hope no one turned up with salmonella the next day.

One job that I took was actually the result of a drunken challenge. Although I'm tall and quite big now, when I was younger, I was rake thin. I virtually had a concave chest and would not have got very far in a fight. So when I noticed an advert for a job in the paper to be a security guard and told my mates about it, all of my friends laughed their heads off. So I thought that I'd show them, and applied to be a security guard on the Orient Express. And I got it.

Wow! I thought. I'd get to see the world. Mix with the glitterati. Maybe meet a rich widow who'd marry me and lead me off to a life of leisure. This was in the days before the Internet, but I should have done some research beforehand. If I'd looked into it then I would have seen that the train normally travelled from Paris to Istanbul and so when I was told to report to a railway siding in Wandsworth I should have realized that I was a bit off track. I was in fact put in charge of looking after the Orient Express trains. But when they were stationary and getting repaired in England.

It was my job to man the security booth and check the workers' badges as they came in at eleven in the evening and then to do the same thing in the morning after they'd finished work. I literally had to sit there and say, ‘Good evening. Good evening. Good evening,' with my head whipping back and forth to catch a glimpse of their security badges as they rushed past me, and do the same thing six hours later. There were about a hundred workers and so I developed a serious strain in my neck doing this job. Up until then I thought you could only get RSI in your wrist.

But being unqualified for a job has never stopped me from applying. After I finished university, I worked for an entire year for the Merton Housing Repair Department and you couldn't meet a less-handy man than me. For example, about a year ago I was on a national tour and I got a flat tyre on the way to Woking. Myself, my warm-up act and the driver were all standing by the side of the road like buffoons for twenty minutes trying to figure out what to do. The tyre was definitely flat. Was there an iPhone app that could help us? What is that thing in the boot? Is it a jack? Is it a wingnut? Is it a batwing? Could we call Batman to help us? We felt like those apes in
2001: A Space Odyssey
when they find the monolith. We ended up calling the RAC.