It’s been 20 days since I last posted here….and I can confirm that I have yet to finish the Kafka novel I started. Damn. To make up for this have another two paragraphs from that relentlessly unnecessary egotistical memoir I’m writing:

The first house we lived in now nestles amongst those greyish recesses of the ol’ mind and thus only stands out to recollection for one reason: stinging nettles. Yes, those bloody prickly green bastards who are the bane of all young children, and whose poisonous vice can only be escaped through the oddly magical, and aptly medical properties of the Doc Leaf. It’s strange how, as children, we let a plant heal our mischief’s instead of going to a real doctor, placing all faith in this leafy paediatrician. It’s like giving one of them Ents in Lord of the Rings a Phd and a stethoscope and demanding it heal cancer. Anyhow, we had a big galumphing patch of these stinging nettles in our garden at Lee View Road, and unfortunately we lived here during the period of blissful ignorance that attaches itself mischievously to all little kids. What drove such a resenting wedge between the nettles and myself wasn’t a mistaken brush as I walked by; casually, but accidently touching the nettles in a naïve manner, but rather a full on idiotic charge into the heart of the prickly thicket. What a silly little tit I was; it’s unforgivable! It happened one day when I was playing with a ball in our garden, neither big nor small, and somehow the ball ended up in the nettle bush. Unfortunately the ball had managed to get itself well and truly lost right in the heart of the bush.

At the time, as I mentioned, I was naïve as to the true power of these truly fucking awful plants and so brazenly charged in as if searching for Colonel Kurtz. However, there were no Kurtz. There was solely a small inflatable ball that could have been sacrificed. What happened next was hell on Earth. I was surrounded, being stung everywhere in, what can only call, a truly horrific, and covert, attack by nature on my fragile young frame. It’s the earliest lesson I remember nature teaching me, however, if nature thinks that’s the way to raise a streetwise and smart kid, then fucking hell! Get fucking social services round to investigate nature straight away…jesus! At any rate, there I was, lost and alone in the bush, in utter agony. I was no longer looking for Kurtz, I was Kurtz…and a child, let’s not forget that…Colonel Kidz maybe? Needless to say, I only had one option, and it was a logical and tangible one: I started crying louder than I’d ever done before. Thankfully, no sooner had the first howls started to emerge than my Dad miraculously appeared through the leaves, like a big, patriarchal rescuer – which is exactly what he was. Looking back now, this memory actually fills me with warmth, not because I’m a child-like sadist, but because my Dad came to my rescue, stinging the shit out of himself in the process. I don’t remember how the ordeal ends, my memory fades to black like a damsel in distress, but I do know that we ended up side by side, comrades, brothers in arms, in nowt but our underwear, whilst my Mum rubbed antiseptic creams and pain soothing balms into our prickled skin. The relief those creams brought felt wonderful.