I guess
this is continuing a theme of childhood memories – I've been
writing a lot of such material lately, trying to get a grip on parts
of my past, to try and find in the child the Tourettic perhaps
Aspergic fellow I am today. Although I seem to have spent a lot of
time scrawling about the killer hornets of the Greek islands, or the
pretentious kids I was forced to share holidays with, rather than
find any significant psychological insights.
I
sometimes wonder if every child has had a spaceship, or a submarine,
or a car, or a nest, or an anything, constructed out of their duvet.
Nowadays I think of my duvet as a tent, a tiny one man shelter I'm
staying in on a bad weather day in the Lake District. But as a child,
it doubled as a spaceship, and a home in a cave.
Getting
the duvet into the right configuration was always tricky; I remember
always being very OCD on getting the duvet in the correct folding
pattern to enable it to feel like a tiny space capsule, rather than
the inside of an obese silkworm. But once it was set up, you could
retreat within, and leave a tiny opening to act as a porthole. I used
to imagine I was being put in suspended animation and being sent on a
space journey designed to last a thousand years.
Although
it usually only lasted until Saturday Superstore came on, and you
wouldn't want to miss that, in case someone called Matt Bianco a
wanker again. Eventually I was rewarded (years later) when someone
asked “Five Star, why are you SO FUCKING CRAP?” If you were in
space for a thousand years, adrift like Major Tom, you might miss
something like that.
Eventually
I grew out of space, and pretended to be a sort of Stig of the Dump
figure, living in a cave up a cliff surrounded by puffins.
Playing
make believe has never left me, and I'm glad it hasn't, no matter how
strange it might seem to others.
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 13.02.14
