was born in Ireland, one September morn, neath the branches of a Sycamore tree. My mother died during childbirth and my father lost his site at the same time to a falling conker. He never forgave me for either incident. My therapist has since told me I have to accept partial reponsibility for my mothers situation but gravity alone was to blame for the thing with the conker.
I digress....I was abandoned that very morning by my one eyed father and left to fend for myself. Were it not for a friendly family of squirrels and a hedgehog named george I would not be here today. They taught me the value of storing nuts and curling up in a ball when a car approaches. Lessons I've never forgotten.
At the age of 7 I could no longer fit in the hole in the tree I had, until that point, called home and so it was time for me to move on. Hindered by the loss of a limb in the great squirrel war of 1985 I hobbled upstream whereupon I stumbled upon a small sailing vessel. For 4 and twenty days I rowed with all my might 'til I reached the shores of a place called Carlisle.
Twas here my luck took a turn for the worse. Plodging in a rockpool I later discovered was contaminated with the remnants of a radioactive disaster just up the road at Sellafield, my remaining leg melted like a finger of fudge in a hot car. My screams were heard by an old shepherd who carried me the 24 miles to his home in Northumberland.
Luckily old shep had two sons who'd lost legs to combine harvesters before they'd been killed outright when hiding in a field shep sprayed with pesticide. He'd kept the wooden limbs all these years to remember them by but now was happy to put them to use and get me back on my feet. Inscribed in the feet of these limbs, by sheps fair hand, were the names of his sons Martin and Colin.
It seems that Colin had unfeasibly large feet as I had to plane four inches off that one to enable me to balance but soon I was walking as well as I ever had, and within 5 years was running half marathons. In the spring of '95 I set of in an annual event just down the road in Newcastle and ended up on the shores of a place called South Shields. It's funny, but as I crossed the border from North to South Tyneside I felt something inside. Like I had found my spiritual home. I knew I was near.
I decided to blindfold myself and 'use the force' to discover the home of my parents. However, I soon found to my detriment that a blindfolded boy, with wooden legs will soon become the target of missiles from passing youths.
I awoke three days later in the unfamiliar surroundings of a hospital I later found to be on Chester Road. The force was telling me I was nearly there and I suddenly became compelled to sing and play air guitar to some of the hits of the period. Kylie and Jason, Rick Astley and Yazz and the Plastic Poulation will forever influence my musical tastes. Was this to be my destiny...?
But what was this....my wooden limbs had been removed and replaced with black plastic ones? They had moveable joints and were infinitely more comfortable but what had happened to my others? I was informed they had been taken to be incinerated and so I ran stretching every nerve and sinew down the corridors where I retrived Martin and Co as I now so fondly knew them.
Bounding out of the doors I crashed into a man who apologised for not seeing me coming as I had approached from his blind side.
To be continued....
Next week........Ady attempts to gouge out Rons other eye for abandoning him but Ron strikes back with a bag of home grown carrots to the groin.
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