Scaredy Cat
It would be easy to say that I don’t like cats and cats don’t like me, but it’s just nowhere near as simple as that. The war between the cat kingdom and me began – as many things do – in a pub.
I wasfifteen. At the time, I had a much older friend called Ricky. He lived two doors down from me, and we met one afternoon when I noticed him unpacking a Commodore Amiga computer. I knew quite a bit about computers and asked him if he’d bought any games for it. We got talking, had the same sense of humour and became good friends: he got on well with my family and started having dinner at our house. Over the next few months, we played and completed an entire crop of classic RPG games and graphic adventures like Eye of the Beholder and The Secret of Monkey Island.
Then, one rainy Friday, he leaned out of the window of his apartment and called down to me as I left for school.
“There’s a guy I want you to meet!” he shouted. “He buys and sells games, and I want to know which ones we should get!”
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.