Steve Brown sent us a rough first draft of a couple of the images that will merely form a part of the final image. I said he would prove his worth if he made Collings look mean and I have to say the photographer surpassed himself. Look at that photo. I am a bit scared to think that that brute is coming round to my house on Friday. I might just shit my pants. Remember this is just a taster. I have a feeling that the final images are going to be just a little bit amazing. And hilarious. But it's exciting to see how I would have looked had it been me, rather than all my contemporaries, who had become a movie star.
I spent the afternoon reading my teenage diaries (from 1980-82 so far) as research for "The Headmaster's Son". It is a bitter-sweet, funny, tragic and embarrassing step into the past. I was, of course, a dick. A lovable and hateable dick. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It really is a mixture of opposites, veering wildly between arrogance and insecurity within seconds. Not unusually for a 14 year old boy I was obsessed with sex and death and how popular/unpopular I was. My allegiances to friends and my promises of eternal love to girls would shift significantly day by day and yet I seem to have little self-awareness. I comment about how boring and rubbish my life and diary are, but then keep on remarking about what it will be like when they are published. Cock.
I am constantly bored or angry about the injustices of life and dismissive and horrible about my peers or my relations. If I could meet myself now I would slap myself in the head.
Just I was hating myself for being a knob, I read this, "I'm glad I'm writing this, because in a few years time I will be able to look back and hate myself for being immature.
Well Rich, I'd just like to point out to you - I know I am being immature, but I enjoy it and anyway I don't want to grow up too fast."
Which at least made me laugh.
But I had no real idea what an idiot I was.
Let's examine some of my views -
"I think the royal family is a waste of time, very false and merely to lull the country into a false sense of security. All the money could help the tramps out on the street."
How I thought the Royal family gives a false sense of security I don't know. But I was a bit obsessed with George Orwell and thought I was able to see through everyone's hypocrisy and lies and that all governments and everything they did was evil. I remember being a bit obsessed about the homeless issue, arguing with my parents about the fact that once my brother and sister had left home they had two spare bedrooms which they could give to homeless people. Which was a little simplistic. And in hindsight I can see that my mum and dad might have been slightly irresponsible if they had just let vagrants sleep in the house and that maybe it might have led to some problems. I suppose I thought that homeless people were just people without homes, not considering that they might be drug addicts, alcoholics or mentally ill. I am not sure there really were many homeless people in Cheddar anyway. If I could have seen the future and seen the 40 year old me living in a big family home on my own, in a city full of tramps, then what would I have thought? I suppose my heart was in the right place though. And to be honest I'd still quite like to see the Royal family's palaces turned over to the homeless.
This one is great - "I am anti-war. I think Britain should get rid of all her armies and weapons. It would show the rest of the world we are serious about disarming and no one would invade us as other countries would intervene. If someone did invade why wouldn't we just accept it. All governments are the same. If we put up no resistance we would still be alive, but not so if someone bombed us because we fired a nuclear missile at them."
I certainly have a point that total disarmament would show the world we were serious about disarming, but it is interesting that my brilliant defence policy depends on other countries stepping in to help us in the event of war. Which meant that they would have to have weapons. We'd save loads of money and other nations would have to pay for the weapons that would protect us. And if they didn't want to, then we should just welcome any invaders as all governments are the same. Brilliant! I was really terrified about the prospect of a nuclear war though and it is good to know that I would accept any form of regime as long as I didn't end up getting killed.
I finished this entry (after a predictable discussion about religion and how I thought Jesus was just "a good man") by saying, "I do not know, and never will, if these things are true and whether they would work, but as long as I can think these things myself I don't care. I don't want to preach."
Which was all very well and good after all the preaching I had just done. And I was was wrong. I do now know that the things I was thinking could not come true. Thank God no one put the 15 year old me in charge of the country.
The early 80s saw the advent of the home video and my friends and me managed to get our hands on lots of X certificate horror films, as well as a smattering of soft porn. We weren't even 16 yet. How did our parents let us get away with it? They should be punished for not keeping us under stricter controls!
I liked to pretend I was above carnal desires (for about half of the time), though it is palpably obvious that I was merely terrified of sex, rather than the high intellectual that I perceived myself to be.
Here is my review of a couple of porn films we watched on New Year's Eve 1981 - "We saw a double bill of very bad porn films (ie badly filmed and edited)"... How terrific that I was concerned mainly about the production values... "the porno films were getting a bit boring with any excuse to have sex taken up,".... and now I wanted the porn films to be properly plotted and realistic, finding it ludicrous that people were just having sex all the time... "with not very attractive girls." So much for being right on. My high minded hypocrisy is then perfectly encapsulated in the final remark, after this disparaging review - "The lesbian scenes were best." Oh Rich.
Still I had a point.
It was lucky there was porn, because I wasn't doing very well with actual real life girls (perhaps not surprisingly given the above attitude). I would fall in love with girls who weren't interested and pine for them for months, very occasionally having a snog with someone (who I would then dismiss as a slag or a whore) or having a holiday romance (I'd like to think that I did OK when I was away from school because I was no longer the headmaster's son and so girls could like me, but in truth I think that without peer pressure, on holiday, we were all able to relax a bit without worrying what our friends would say - I am enormously conscious of what others would think of me. Perhaps this was a good protective force to keep us pure) For about a year I was "in love" with a girl in my class called Fiona, though too pathetically shy to tell her, though I clearly dropped some pretty heavy hints and reading back at how she reacted I think that for a time at least she probably liked me too. But she had a long term boyfriend and my love was hopeless (which was probably lucky for me as it saved me having to do anything about it and meant I could pine away and profess my love in my diary - whilst reviewing the porn films I had been watching on the previous page). I enjoyed this entry about a dream I had had about her - "In the dream I was dieing and I went up to Fiona, asked her if I could hug her, did so while telling her I loved her. Then, at least for a short while, I died in her arms. She did not tell me she loved me and obviously didn't, but the fact I was hugging her, feeling her warm face against mine was enough. It was just a dream sadly..." Yeah, very sad. What a shame I hadn't actually died.
And before you think I was quite romantic, here is the 16 year old me proudly revealing my most intimate secrets -
"I now masturbate once a day when it's a school day, but twice at weekends and in the holidays." (why not - treat yourself) "I often watch TV and wank when women come on, if everybody is out." (who says I was inconsiderate) "These wanks usually last about two to three hours as I have to wait for beautiful women to be on and for men to get off." Two to three hours?
What a horrible, dirty little boy I was. Thank God things have changed. I am now no longer so sexist and happily masturbate even over ugly women on TV. Though I still have to wait for the men to get off screen, because obviously I am not gay!
So there teenage Rich, your dream has come true. Some of your teenage diary has now been published, if only in internet form so far. I hope you're proud of yourself.
I hoped that in researching this show I would be able to discover that by going to the school where my dad was headmaster I had suffered huge psychological damage, which would explain why I had ended up screwing up my life so badly. But thus far there is absolutely no indication, in the diary at least, that it had any effect on me. I don't even mention it. And I seemed to have quite a high old time at school (and at home as long as no one else was in). Which isn't to say it isn't significant, but I think I might have to accept that my flaws are my own and can't be blamed on anyone else. Which is disappointing.
And if my future self is reading this blog and hating me for being immature can I say, Well Rich, I'd just like to point out to you - I know I am being immature, but I enjoy it and anyway I don't want to grow up too fast. I'm only 40 for crying out loud.
