AUTO BIO (PART ONE)

saturday's child works hard for his living...
at 5:30pm on saturday 6th july 1968
towards the end of the prague spring
at the height of the vietnam and biafran wars
while the beatles were ensconced in the white album
arguing the toss over obladis and obladas
baby fireseed emerged into an unsuspecting world
gulping down his first breaths
at a public hospital near elmdon airport
strangely appropriate
bearing in mind his later peripatetic existence...
little fireseed grew out of nappies in nearby stetchford
during which time brother john geoffrey was born
before the family traversed the city
to the bournville village trust estate
a leafy suburb adjoining the cadburys factory
near 'willy' watton's school
where delicious chocolatey aromas
were undermined by the smell of chlorine from the local swimming baths
in the street where he grew up
the young fireseed formed a neighbourhood gang
nice middle-class kids who mostly kept out of trouble
except for the odd prank here and there
and poking fun at the bionic fairy
endless footy n cricket matches
games played outside on long summer evenings...
at school he kept his head down
refused to talk to the teachers
in fact he wouldn't say boo to a goose
he swotted n passed the 11+
and for his sins spent his adolescence
at a desolate rugby-playing single-sex grammar school
beside a windswept reservoir on the edge of the city
a place where the masters still wore dark robes
there he proved inept at socialising
and continued to keep himself to himself
his thoughts locked firmly inside his head
wishing away the long hours
suffering the indignity of teachers getting his name wrong
jumping through a lot of hoops
giving up the subjects he liked
applying himself to the subjects he didn't like
but thought he should take
reading the right books
passing the right exams
and at the tender age of 17 landing a plaice
at the you-knee-verse-city of not-in-gum
at this time the opposite sex was still an alien species
and untutored by a mentor
the teenage fireseed's musical tastes were sorely limited
the sixties pop of the beatles n byrds
monopolising the vinyl collection
as he took his first tender steps into tunesmithism
the sixteen-year-old fireseed even stoked controversy
in the local mead-ear
by publishing a morriseyesque attack
in the burning-ham evening mail
under the banner headline
'pop music today is mindless rubbish'
then finally the first contemporary sounds broke through
first u2 then the church hitting the turntable
and on his first foray abroad
a summer camping trip to the south of france in '86
with gavin rebello n andy pascal
our boy experienced a revelation
not his prowess at french
but the nuances, jangles and harmonies
of rem's murmur...
(to be continued)