Thank Heavens

I spent my early years in a house literally full of women. Everywhere I went, even when I tried to hide, (I had a cupboard that I favoured for that purpose) they were there, always, fussing over me, picking me up and playing with me. My mum was the queen, certainly the most important figure in my life then, (she is still up there) my dad was a close second and my hero of course, but he is not really in this story because he was always working.

My mum Peggy was working down in the town (as she called Portobello/Notting Hill) at a paste jewellery manufacturer owned by a lovely old Jewish fella called Mr Freund.

During her working hours I would usually be looked after by my great-grandmother (Mag - or the Scourge of Edgware Road as she was known) who was patently too old to behave the way she did. She would get up to all sorts of mischief with me - and a few other people, she was 75 going on 15. One rainy afternoon in her scullery  (yes she had one of those), at the mature age of six, I was introduced to the pleasures of snuff, I sneezed brown snot non-stop for the rest of the day.

Once my grandmother (another Maggie - Mag's daughter, confused?) sat me on the top of the cooker which had only recently been in commission, I was unharmed, but burning nappy is not a great room freshener. She also made me eat a bowl of mince meat and onions from a saucepan into which she had inadvertently emptied the complete contents of a salt cellar when the cap came off and disappeared into the brown muck, it was only when my mum came home and had her portion, that the way I had been squirming was explained as a symptom of extreme trauma, to this day I struggle with mince, especially if it is highly seasoned.

Then there was my nutty younger sister Vicky who was the original lil' miss dynamite and an absolute pain in the arse, aunty Sheila, my mum's cheeky younger sister (she still is) who was probably turning twenty by then, her girlfriends made a fuss of me too, my second cousin Chrissy about the same age as Sheila, always smiling. The upstairs and downstairs neighbours. Lil Whicker was the be-pinnied lady that lived on the ground floor who over the years probably borrowed several tons of sugar from my mum - one teacup at a time, and finally Pammy Oliver the leather-clad biker-girl the floor above whose bedroom had a wild deep-purple egg box wall decor.

There have been many other women in my life since (not wishing to sound like Mr Lover Lover Man) squeezes, partners, co-workers, friends, one (ex)wife, two lovely daughters and an incredible girlfriend who belongs to her own coven of lovelies up in the Chiltern Hills.

I have always preferred the company of women, I suppose my love affair with the opposite sex started there in Paddington as a small boy, and now as an old silver fox, I can twiddle the ends of my non-existent 'tache and sing under my breath a song that was played on the radio all the time when I was young (one which in retrospect seems one the most suspect lyrics ever written), sung by Maurice Chevalier: Thank Heavens for Little Girls.