Don’t Make Eye Contact
I’d only been working as a shift runner at Blockbuster Video for a few days when the incident happened, and I remember thinking that it was a perfect reflection of my luck that had it happened just a week before then none of it – none of it - would have been my responsibility. I could just have continued to do stock rotation and left the entire messy business to somebody else.
But it did happen....and, somewhat typically, it happened to me.
Smoker’s Paradise
I grew up in a family of smokers who smoked in between smokes. My mum was the lesser of these: she only smoked Superkings and bought them in packs of twenty at the local shop. When she couldn’t get Superkings, she would smoke other brands, but the fact that she needed to get them from the shop did at least mean she didn’t smoke constantly.
My nan smoked EVERYTHING. She started on roll-ups in the morning but by lunchtime would be lighting up any old dog ends she could find: I once saw her put a match to one of those bang snaps just because she thought it was a dog end. Yes, they were THAT small.
Where’s The Wabbit?
When I was growing up, our house was always full of men whom I naturally thought were my ‘Uncles’. One of these was a super friendly guy my mum and nan called ‘Legover Jack’. Now, being a small boy, I was obviously curious as to how Legover had got his name. One night, in the old Iron Juke public house that used to stand at the junction of Bellevue Road and the Plains of Waterloo, I asked the landlord – Johnny Giles – why the man had such a strange nickname.
Giles winked at me and said: ‘He likes a drink. The rhyme goes: Legover Jack, Legover Jack, takes three steps forward and four steps back.’
Naturally, I believed this, although it later became obvious that Legover was a ladies' man with so many notches on his bedpost that it was a small miracle he could still sleep on the bed without it collapsing.
In any case, I was maybe five or six years old at the time, and Legover Jack always did the same thing when he saw me in The Iron Duke. He would come up to me, bend down, whisper ‘What’s going on behind here, then…’ and suddenly pull a pound coin from my ear.
It was incredible, and I loved it...and not just because I was always a quid richer whenever I saw him.
It was MAGIC. Real magic.
You Could Leave Your Door Open…
I was born in the early hours of the morning at QEQM Hospital in Margate, an odd baby with a shock of ginger hair and a tiny mole on the knuckle of my left index finger. I was a bit of a miracle birth as my mother had been told she couldn’t have children (although this might have been spot on as I’ve never been officially classified as human). The date was 25th January 1978: I do know that.
My dad was the foreman for a local building contractor. He’d originated from Ireland but spent a lot of time in Thanet for his work. He was tall, dark and charismatic if not actually handsome. The comedian Dave Allen once said ‘The Irish are good at populating other countries, in more ways than one...so for all you know you might be laughing at your brother.’ In my dad’s case, this was almost literally true, as it soon emerged that he had a wife and three children in Portsmouth, the place he’d lived when he’dfirst arrived in the UK. My mum quickly decided that he wouldn’t be a good influence and sensibly made the decision to sever ties with him....so I grew up as the only child of a one-parent family on the Westcliffof Ramsgate before we moved across town to live with my nan.
Haunted Ramsgate (2023)
It’s hard to imagine now when you look at the sheer size and magnificence of the Granville Hotel…but for most of my childhood, half of it was quite literally a pile of old rubble. When I say rubble, I’m talking about the sort of mess you get in a Marvel movie when the Hulk goes rampaging through downtown New York. I guess there’s a good chance it was war damage, but as kids we just thought it was an awesome play area.
Why We All Miss Blockbuster Video (2023)
It’s a dark and rainy Friday night in Ramsgate sometime during September 2001 and I’m running the late shift at Blockbuster Video. I’m standing at the counter facing down a monster of a guy with a chin like an anvil who I just KNOW is going to be trouble. He is GLARING at me.
‘Say that again, mate?’
Ramsgate During the 80s (2023)
It’s the late 1980s and I’m sitting outside Woolworths on Ramsgate High Street watching a man dressed as a chicken taking on Morris, the lovable town drunk, in a fight over a Kazoo.
Carry on Camping (2026)
Carry on Camping, performed at the Birchington Centre between 4th-6th June by Leaky Brain Productions.
The Early Crowd (2023)
Are you sleeping comfortably? Then I’ll begin….
There’s a community in Thanet that you probably don’t know anything about: I say that with some confidence because I’m a member of that community, and there’s only about twenty of us.