Occasionally, however, it was my short fuse that caused the problem – when you don’t know how to express yourself, your feelings manifest themselves in a fashion that is immature and angry. One time, for example, I said to this kid, ‘You are chewing your gum too loud,’ and that was that – bang! I dropped him. My build was only average but I was always ‘extra’ – namely I was a showman. I have never been a show-off, that is a negative word. My intention was always (and still is) to be a showman, to entertain.
I wasn’t powerful so I lost as many fights as I won, but I was righteous. I fought at least three days a week with bullies and at least four days a week with my brothers. I then moved to Peckham Manor Secondary School, where such behaviour continued and I was expelled after only one month.
When I was 13, I grew dreadlocks and became a rasta. I smoked a lot of weed too. I eventually cut the locks off, because my father stopped talking to me. He was a Jamaican who wasn’t into the rasta lifestyle, so he was very disapproving. However, he loved Bob Marley. The album Exodus was on my Dad’s record player all the time. I think at one point it was the only record he actually had. Despite being on constant rotation, I never tired of hearing that album, it was my homely feel cut into vinyl. Still today, whenever I hear the record, it brings back floods of memories. Marley was a great musician, and that style of music is in my soul. He has also been a great motivator for me – his words are all about strength of character, rectitude, correctness, righteousness: being an earth man.
Back then, I had so much energy. However, I did not always do the correct thing, I still had a lot to learn. This energy carried over into my behaviour outside of school as well. If someone wanted to steal some sweets, I was always the first in the queue. And, I didn’t just take a single Mars bar, I would grab five. I would take the task in hand and do it.
One day my father came back from work and said to my brothers, ‘Where’s Christopher?’ No one knew. At 9 o’clock that evening, there was a knock at the door and it was the police, who informed my father that I had been taken into care. I don’t know if the authorities can do that without consent, but they certainly did it with me. I’d had a social worker assigned to me for some time at Peckham Manor. He was called Mr Lord Okine, an African fellow who drove this little white Datsun. I didn’t even know what a social worker was, I didn’t understand.
Peter was the first brother to be taken into care, then David, then me. Simon stayed at home. It was not my father’s fault: he didn’t give us up to care, the authorities took us away. It wasn’t a complete shame for me because it had become boring at home with Dad. I couldn’t stop misbehaving, it was in my nature. I remember thinking, why is this man beating me so much? I realised it was because I was getting caught . . . so I stopped getting caught.
The first care home I went to was The Hollies in Sidcup. It was a massive complex made up of 36 different homes, each named after trees, and one called Reception Centre where I was. My brother David was in Larch. I was met at Reception Centre by a member of staff who took me on a tour of the building. He showed me a room which had a table tennis table, a pool table and a communal eating area. The tour continued, revealing a tuck shop, a storage room and the staff room, before finally ending up at my dormitory. They sat me down in there and gave me my briefing.
Being taken into care was almost like winning the lottery. Can you imagine my sense of bliss? The fridge was full of food – beefburgers, sausages, everything. I could play pool. I had a dorm with new friends to meet and, most fantastically of all, my own warm bed – no more four to a mattress! The whole place was even heated! It was such a wonderful experience meeting these kids from Scotland, Manchester, all over the UK, seeing their different attitudes, hearing their different tales. That first term at The Hollies was one of the best experiences of my life – I had three meals a day, table tennis, pool, and there were girls. Heaven! We used to climb down the drainpipes to get into their dorms: it was such good fun.
But just as at school, however, I found myself getting into trouble and was shifted between care homes several times in four years. In 1979 I went to Yastrid Hall in North Wales, which I now know to have been in the midst of the sexual abuse scandal that did not come to light until the mid-90s, when it was revealed that a network of adults appeared to have been involved in abusing children across the country. I wasn’t abused sexually or otherwise, I didn’t even know there was a problem. It has transpired that certain children were being abused, but at the time I never knew. Admittedly, I was engrossed in my own little world but, fortunately for me, that whole terrible saga passed me by.
From Yastrid Hall, I went to Stanford House in Shepherds Bush for seven weeks in a lock-up for assessment. From there I was sent to St Vincent’s in Dartford for a month, before being expelled and taken to Orchard Lodge in Crystal Palace, for another seven-week assessment in a secure unit. From there, I went to Karib, a care home for ethnic minorities in Nunhead, SE 15, was expelled again after only one month, then sent to Davy’s Street in Peckham.
All this time I was a highly unruly boy. I still had a short fuse, I was a very fast runner (ten miles in 72 minutes when I was 13), quite clever, and my sleight of hand wasn’t too bad. I took full advantage of my skills, always breaking into staff rooms and tuck shops or the newsagents down the road to pilfer cartons of 200 cigarettes. Such petty crimes later progressed to shoplifting and repetitive absconding.
Yes, it could be described as a very itinerant childhood. However, my view is this: moving around so much is the perfect way to ensure that an individual continues to have new experiences. You never get stuck in a rut when you’re barely at the same place for more than three months at a time. Constantly having to make new friends was not a burden because I preferred my own company anyway; I was still something of a loner. Now, as an adult, I can travel anywhere and feel comfortable in any situation, an ability I put down partly to these teenage years spent on the move.
It was around this time that, despite my antics to the contrary, I started to read proverbs. Although it would be some years before I succeeded in applying (or at least tried to apply) myself to many of the words I was reading, the wisdom they offered always appealed to me. I was always enthralled and intrigued by the wise man and words.
In North Wales, there was a kid in care with me called Timmy Brian, who had this marvellous way of strutting about. I watched him swagger around and noted the effect this had on people, so I started to do my own version, with my own flavour. Timmy was a very courageous black kid from Nottingham who thought of himself as Superman. He used to point his hands skywards like he was flying through the air and I used to roar with laughter. Sometimes I still copy him. If you’ve watched me on television, perhaps on A Question of Sport, you may have seen me doing this. When a show starts, the warm-up man asks the audience to give a round of applause, even though no one has done anything of note yet. I always thought that was an odd situation, so when it happens and the applause starts out of nowhere, I often put my hand in the air like Superman, like Timmy Brian. It is just a fun thing but, of course, some critics say, Oh, look at Eubank, assuming they are clapping him.’ I’m not, I’m just being a big kid again, back in North Wales with Timmy.
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