… Zig zag; a very short autobiography

As I grow up, I’m trying to make sure my kids have all the opportunities I never had. 

Except that’s not true. 

I did have all these opportunities as a kid.

So let me try that again. 

As I grow up, I’m trying to make sure my kids take all the opportunities I never did because I was too lazy, cowardly or just watching television. 

They say it’s the things you don’t do that you regret, rather than the things you do. Like swapping careers. Or travelling the world. Or deploying a parachute.

And for this reason my family does have a relentless schedule of stage school and cycling proficiency and ballet classes and swimming clubs and cub scouts and trumpet lessons.

But opportunity isn’t as straightforward as that.  The biggest plot twists and the greatest opportunities that have shaped my life have come from the much smaller moments.  Come back with me and we’ll take a look…

September 1986

Justin Thorman, captain of the Under Tens, glides effortlessly past a defender, feints left then slides the ball just inside the right post. I dive low to my left. At full stretch I block the shot.

“Great save!” praises Mr Armstrong, the deputy head/referee.

The dive is a whisker late.

The ball squirts under my body and rolls in slow motion over the line.  I am helpless to stop it.

“Awww!  Soft goal!” shouts the anguished Mr. Armstrong.

The next week, so embarrassed by that one moment, I tell Mr. Armstrong I’d like to try hockey so asked to be demoted to “Game 2” where the sports duffers played hockey instead of football with no pressure, no expectations and, crucially, no skill.

Rick #1 who dived a quarter of a second sooner didn’t concede the soft goal, stayed in Game 1 with the cool, confident kids and, thanks to the mathematical principle of deviation to the mean, became cool and confident.

And probably wouldn’t have bothered so much about his acne.

March 1990

“So I wondered if you’d mind if we were just friends instead of going out?”

Now the actual answer would have been “yes I very much mind” but I don’t think that was ever an acceptable answer to the question.

Perhaps if it had been posed as a multiple choice like my chemistry GCSE I would have understood better.  I could do those.

So:  Q1.  So can we be just friends instead of going out?

1. OK
2. It doesn’t really matter what I think because once you’ve dumped me it no longer has any bearing whether I still fancy you or not
3. That’s about it, really
4. Hydrochloric acid

I went for option B, but then scribbled it out and went for answer A.

Slightly handsomer Rick #2 put up a little more of a fight and continued to punch above his weight on the dating stakes throughout high school. 

I did well in GCSE chemistry where ironically the answer was indeed d) Hydrochloric acid.

December 1992.

The lower sixth always got the best parts in the school play.  I’d previously played “narrator” and “non-specific English Aristocrat” in the preceding years.  A bit wooden perhaps, but enthusiastic. And tall enough to be seen and loud enough to be heard from the back of a school hall.

What was it going to be?

Digging deep into my dramatic soul to play Hamlet?  Posing the triple threat, showing my versatility as a showman as the Phantom of the Opera?

No.

Act 1, Scene1.  Setting:  An English Classroom.

Mr Morton:        You’ll be a dog.

Me:                       Eh?

Mr Morton:        In fact there will be four of you.  You will be “third dog”.

Me:                       Not Hamlet?

Mr Morton:        And you know the way you’re sixteen, clumsy and achingly self-aware?

Me:                       Yeah?

Mr Morton:        You’ll be in a papier mache mask.

Me:                       But Sir!

Mr Morton:        And leggings!

Rick #3 who was cast in the lead never went to medical school, but after drama school was picked up to play the lead in a gritty BBC drama before the announcement in 2012 that he was to be the first Northern Irish actor to play James Bond. 

I, however, had loads of time free for revision as my only lines were to woof and occasionally growl, and so scraped the grades for medical school.

The list goes on.  Little things.  Always the little things.

August 1995 on a medical school GP placement my supervisor Dr Jennings invited me to his house for a ham and tomato sandwich at lunch time, which convinced me I preferred general practice to hospital medicine. 

In January 1998 I pretended to be interested in Coronation Street when out for birthday drinks with my friend Jonathan because, in an uncharacteristically brave move, I needed an excuse to get into conversation with his significantly prettier friend (who to this day proves the theory that you can fool some of the people all of the time). 

The rainy holiday to Italy in May 2009.  If it had been drier we’d have got the train to Florence.  In the event a few weeks later we opened a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne-type-wine with my parents because we had cause for celebration but one of us wasn’t allowed to drink.

And that is how life has gone.  I realise it’s impossible to protect my children from these tiny ripples.  A series of random zig zags that dependent on the tiniest twist of fate could have gone in any direction. 

Taken me anywhere. 

Or looked at from the other direction, not a random zig zag but a lightning bolt

that, with uncontainable force

led me inevitably

and irresistibly…

to here.