We also had a cat called Jessica, as well as two dogs, Bill and Ben, who would actually pull Luke and me along on our bikes and skateboards. Those dogs were gorgeous, and absolutely mad. We also had a beautiful Yorkshire terrier called James, the love of my mum’s life, but he was run over and poor Mum found him on a wall, just lying there dead, where someone had placed him after the accident. Mum was distraught. So for many reasons, Cheddar was not a beacon of happy memories for me.
It wasn’t all bad there, but the fleeting brighter moments were suffocated by missing London and not liking our peers. I pretty much kept myself to myself. Life there just didn’t feel right – it was a beautiful place, but the kids were just wankers to us because we were from London! However, one pool of happiness within the muddy water of life in Cheddar was Bridget, the prettiest girl in the school. One day I was leaving school for home when a girl came running up to me and said, ‘Matt! Matt! Bridget really likes you,’ and I said, ‘Who’s Bridget?’ At that moment, the school coach drove past and as it headed off slowly up the lane, I could see the whole back row were looking out of the window at me and this girl.
‘Bridget’s the girl in the middle,’ she said.
‘Bloody ’ell! That’s Bridget?!’ I was stunned. Everyone fancied this girl, she was gorgeous.
Bridget’s messenger friend immediately gave two thumbs up to the back of the coach and the entire row of girls just exploded. It was a surreal moment, because up until then I had just felt invisible, I didn’t think anyone had even noticed me. I was delighted.
Within a week, we were snogging in Farmer Giles’s barn (complete with my teeth-brace, which I had until I was sixteen). Luke was snogging some bird in there as well. To this day, there’s nothing like snogging when you are a young teenager, it was the best thing, and you’d snog like ten girls in an afternoon. Anyway, Farmer Giles was pretty notorious in the narrow streets of Cheddar for having a Morris Minor pickup with a man-eating German Shepherd dog prowling in the back. This animal would actually reach out and try to nip you as his owner drove past. Pretty quickly you’d learn to dive into a shop doorway if you heard the stuttering rumble of Farmer Giles’s Morris engine. This dog was the stuff of legend – I once saw half a Jack Russell that had been part-eaten by this dog.
We knew that we were in the lion’s den by snogging away in this barn, but we figured it was unlikely he’d come back while we were actually there. Wrong. Like startled rabbits, we all jumped to our feet in unison when we heard Farmer Giles’s van trundling into the yard and towards the barn. There was only one course of action – we scarpered. I vividly recall running at full pelt across a field, lips numbed from hours of snogging and legs chafed from hours of dry humping through jeans, with the giant German Shepherd rampaging after us, drooling at the prospect of a kill. Eventually, after what seemed like an interminable and enduring panic, Farmer Giles finally called his dog off the chase. It was one of the scariest moments ever, like some twisted horror-version of Last of the Summer Wine.
Luke and I weren’t the only ones who didn’t settle in Cheddar, Tony really disliked it too. Before a year was out, the decision was made to sell up and move out. I can’t say I was disappointed, even though the prospect of starting at yet another school wasn’t a bright one. I was just glad to be leaving. So we packed our suitcases, left Jasmine Cottage and headed back to London.
A few days after arriving back in the capital, I said to a kid, ‘You got any daps?’
‘What the fak are daps, mate?’ he said. ‘They’re called trainers up ’ere . . .’
We’d sold Jasmine Cottage when we left Cheddar, but hadn’t yet bought a house back in London, so for about two months we lived in a caravan. I was just about to start secondary school, which is such a formative period of childhood, and here we were living in a caravan. I hated living on that site with its cold, concrete communal shower stalls and cramped spaces. Yet, even though I wasn’t a fan, I knew that we were only there because of circumstances, a moment in time, and my mum’s continued dedication to Lukie and me far outweighed any dislike I had of my temporary home. I could have lived anywhere as long as I was with Mum and Luke.
Looking back, knowing how hard life was for her at times, my mum was just a tower of strength. She would drive us ninety minutes to school in Camberley every day then just after lunch get back in the car to pick us up again. It was such an effort for her but she never batted an eyelid.
Unfortunately, my dad’s perception of the situation was different. He decided then that these were not the ideal circumstances for two children to be in and announced that he wanted custody of us. It was a heavy moment for my mum.
Dad was elusive at times when I was younger, or that’s what some of my memories tell me. I didn’t quite understand him then. It is hard for me to talk about these things because I love him so much and as adults we are great friends. He is sensitive to those difficult times, understandably, but I am often put in a position when I am asked questions about such things, so I will try to be as respectful as I can whilst still recounting the history.
As an adult, I can probably understand Dad’s perception of our temporary caravan lifestyle, his feelings came from the right place. But life’s not always about perception, it’s about finding out the facts, and certain situations are not always exactly how they appear. Despite how it might have looked, I loved my mum desperately, so I was essentially happy at the site and, although I didn’t like it on the surface, I didn’t feel any less safe because I was in a caravan. When the custody issue was raised, it was an intensely fearful moment for my mum, I know that now, but I don’t have explicit memories because I was only a kid. All I knew was that I was very happy as long as my mum was with me. So, when I heard I had to go to court, it was no problem. I just thought to myself, I will go and tell the judge how I feel, which is that I am not going anywhere. I love Dad but I do not want to leave Mum.
So that was what I did. Luke was exactly the same and there didn’t seem anything else to discuss. That’s as simple as it felt to me at the time. We were old enough at that point to say to the judge, ‘No, I want to live with my mum,’ and as I recall it, our frankness resolved the issue.
What I will say from that experience and having seen the effects of such predicaments on children and parents, is that if it is at all possible for couples who have separated to keep a line of communication open, even if it is formal rather than friendly, then please try to do so. After that issue was settled and we stayed with Mum, communications between her and Dad opened up a little bit – prior to that they had sometimes been quite constricted (it is strange as an adult to think they were once so deeply in love). Better communications in these circumstances will eventually benefit the children, no question.
As I’ve mentioned, while we were living in all these different places, the one constant that never wavered was my grandparents’ flat in Crawford Road, Camberwell, the one place that felt like ‘home’ to me as a kid. When I remember Crawford Road I think of white pepper. My grandad used to put stacks of white pepper on his roast dinner.
In that flat I saw my mum happy, her mood would change when she got there and so that was uplifting for us too. I would love going round to find my Aunt Sally at home. Even though Sally was a gardener at Buckingham Palace, she used to dress a bit like a hippy and always had an afro comb which she would be pulling through her hair. She would buy a new pair of gleaming white plimsolls, come straight home and bury them in the garden for an hour. As a little kid, I was absolutely bemused, but now I understand that she wanted them to look