All Slights Deserved

Sometimes you want to go right back to the beginning; before it became complicated, before all the doubts, disappointments and cynicism. When every day felt new and different yet comfortingly the same. Although I was born in London my earliest memories are of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. I can just about recall standing with my mum beside my sister's cot when I was two years old, nearly three. Gradually the impressions grow more substantial; Christmases and birthdays, my first day at school (what a miserable old git that headmaster was), climbing to the top of the apple tree in our back garden, finishing third in a race on sports day because, while in the lead, I'd stopped to watch my fellow competitors! It feels so vivid and real compared to later years and perhaps a part of me died when we moved away the summer before I turned eight. I know I'd never feel quite so sure of myself again.  Maybe that's why I've felt the urge to revisit it a couple of times in...