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On the 14/08/2000 I reached my 52nd birthday and decided that I would dedicate each week of the the year to write about one year of my life.As I couldn't remember much from the first few years of it I wouldn't need to start until September, by the time September came around I'd forgotten all about it! However now and again I did write something:- If anyone wants to contact me to add to or alter the content you can email me here

I was born quite young and baptised Gerhard Anthony Amies. For the first five years I grew up in a three storied terrace house at 17 Cross St. Kidderminster since demolished and not just the house but the street was wiped off the map to build a Youth Centre. I don't know how many of my memories from there are really mine and how many were transmitted to me by my mother. Me falling into the washing tub is from my mother. The washing was done in an outhouse, in those days the washing was thrown into this huge barrel full of soapy water left to soak and then pulled out over a washboard where the laundry was rubbed up and down the corrugations. Our washing machine was called mom! Somehow when I was too young to remember 8/10 months I imagine, I managed to fall into this barrel. On reflection I was extremely lucky to survive. My mother who was some 15 metres away in the kitchen came out to see what was happening when she heard my intermittent crying as I surfaced and went under again. When she pulled me out she could do nothing but laugh, because I was sitting there crying heavily and with every wail a stream of bubbles came out of my mouth she always said from my ears as well. I say lucky because there was no TV then so she heard me. I myself remember a slate falling off the roof while I was going past on my tricycle I was close enough to the wall to avoid being sliced in two. Again mom heard the crash and came running out. I remember also pretending to go to work with Tony Amer a boy who lived two doors away. We used to ask our moms to prepare us a lunchbox of sandwiches. We'd then walk 300 yards from Cross St. to Prospect Hill where there was a slagheap. The slagheap later became an Elim Church but then it was between a blast furnace and a small factory. We'd climb to the top of the slagheap and eat our sandwiches then play for a while and go home. This also turned out to be one of the many strange co-incidences that happen in life. Ten years later the slagheap has gone and I find my first job in that little factory next to the new church built on the slag heap site. Something else we used to do was when someone went to the outside toilets which were at the bottom of the 'garden' or backyard. We'd lift the manhole cover and watch the water flowing past when they pulled the chain. They'd also usually come out soon after and find us there looking into the hole. I don't know what they thought I was only 3 or 4 years old. Once I remember setting fire to the house, it must have been late October early November because Sheila, possibly Pauline and I were playing with sparklers therefore we must have been near to Guy Fawkes night. We were all outside in the backyard swinging them around in circles and zig zags when I wondered if these sparks could actually ignite things like paper or wood. I wandered into the house and tried it on a pile of old newspapers inside a built in cupboard. It wasn't easy but with patience and tenacity I managed to get them going. However the flames rose a higher than I expected and I couldn't put them out. Then there was my sister there I don't know whether I called her or she came to see what I was up too. Now both of us couldn't put them out I think she ran to get help from the neighbours but it was them that finally brought it under control. The damage wasn't a lot, I honestly can't remember the beating I got but I'm sure I got one. My mother used to go down the pub in the evenings, I don't remember it's name right now, it was only 30 yards from our house. We had a dog named Judy and she had fleas! One night I'm lying in bed and I see one on my sheet, I get out of bed and start shouting out of the first floor window “There's a flea in my bed!” After I don't know how long someone goes into the pub and tells mom that I'm shouting out the window something about a flea. So she comes racing home before I let even more than whole street know we'd got fleas. Sheila my older sister at this time wore leg irons and one day the three of us, Pauline in pram Sheila pushing it and me bored on foot tagging along. We were walking along Anchorfields, which is actually a street that in 1952 ended with a steep hill. As we were approaching it Sheila asked me to go ahead and see if there was a hill ahead because she was sure there was one around here somewhere. I went ahead and looked over the cliff and then assured her that there was no hill here. She advanced and the pram started pulling her until she couldn't hold it back so then she tried to run with it hoping to keep it at least upright. She finally fell letting it go accelerating downhill as she fell to the ground. The pram careered out of control and just before the bottom of the hill swerved across the road toppling over and tossing Pauline onto the road and then falling 6 feet down an escarpment on the other side of the pavement. Three old women who had seen most of this from where they sat on their doorsteps came running out into the road. Pauline had a cut on her thigh and I think Sheila grazed her knees. She told them what had happened and I got severely reprimanded. Once again I don't remember any disciplinary proceedings in consequence of this. The slaughter house was very close to our house and many times we had to run home in panic when bulls escaped and started running full tilt through the streets. It was always a question of getting to 'our alley' which was the entrance to our backyard, as it was so narrow we felt safe that a bull wouldn't fit into it. In the 5 years that I was there I never once remember the front door being used. I also can't remember ever seeing my immediate next door neighbours. I do recall also an incident when mom was holding me in her arms and the guy she was living with threw something at her. It is such a vague memory and the thing I remember most is her turning sharply around to put herself between the missile and me. I had no relationship with this guy, he wasn't my dad. He was often drunk even though I didn't know what drunk was at the time. I can't even remember many Christmases or birthday parties from this period, I do remember searching for presents and finding them in the attic. In July 1951 my mom went away for a few days to Jarrow and when she came back I had a new sister. Another memory that just jumped into head, Shelagh gave my 'Roy Rogers' comic to some guy she had a crush on. I can still remember one scene from that comic where they (baddies or Indians) had left him hanging upside down from a tree. I really loved that comic and was really sad about losing it. When I was just 5 years old we moved house. It was a new Housing Estate, it still wasn't finished when moved in. The house was but the estate wasn't. Soon after we moved house within weeks in fact I had to suffer the trauma of starting school, I hated it! My first year was at St Georges infants in Leswell lane. I had to start there because St Ambrose's the school I should have gone to was full. The first day my sister took me because she was at St Ambrose's and it was only 50 yards further down the road. The second day I started pretending stomach aches within 30 yards of the school and then going home where it went OK but the second time I tried it I was taken straight back there by my mother and the lecture I got on route made it clear that I couldn't use the stomach ache ruse again. So I had to endure lessons. I remember once they gave us for dessert boiled fruits, I knew all of it, the apples, pears and plums but this time there was something new, although I didn't know at the time it was a fig. It was round like a snooker ball and being curious I cut it with my spoon and put some in my mouth, when I bit it, it crunched and I didn't like it, it was like eating sand. I spit it out, ate everything else and left the figs on the plate. When the teachers or whoever came to collect the plates there was a problem, nobody was allowed to leave anything you had to eat it all so now teachers accumulated behind me telling me to eat it, me refusing. All the other pupils were sent back to their classes and I spent the afternoon sitting between a teacher and a plate with one and a half figs and a half eaten half chewed half a fig on it. In the end she the school went home and I was released. I must admit that if I had tried that a year later Sister Cathaldus would have beaten the shit out me until I ate it! I do remember getting busted by her for playing truant with Ron Hodgetts. She gave me 6 wacks across the palm of my hand with a 12" ruler! On the truant day I do remember playing on a helter skelter which was part of the flour mill by the railway sidings where they later built the market. Most of the rest is forgotten.

Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies.

I am the most modest man in the world.

Work, the curse of the drinking class.

Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope!

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Years ago while doing forced labour I wrote this sentence for foreign students studying English. To help them practice the 'thorn'(th) sound:- Thirty three threadbare Thracians thrashed thirteen Thespians through thronged Thebian thoroughfares.

Cheating at patience is like faking an orgasm when you masturbate!

Spud smoking a sausage August 2006