A columnist in the Guardian today revealed that he had been burgled, but all the thieves had taken were his kids' Play Station and a book that he was supposed to be reviewing (though he did admit he might just have left the latter object somewhere else and forgotten about it).
This reminded me of an event from my childhood: I believe I was around 7 years of age when it happened. Our teacher had asked us to write about something that had happened to us recently. This may have been a regular diary-style exercise and as such was an early pre-Internet precursor to Warming Up - imagine how much it would make in open auction if only I had hung on to that exercise book. Probably in excess of three pounds.
Anyway, displaying the inventive mind that would one day lead to me writing a book about cocks, on this particular day I wrote about how my house had been burgled the previous night. This was not in actual fact true. Something that in hindsight I made abundantly clear by claiming that the only thing the burglar had taken was my dressing-up policeman outfit. I wasn't exhibiting an early streak of dramatic irony by having a thief stealing the outfit of a law enforcer; the police outfit was, at the time, my most precious possession (not any more. I don't have it now. And anyone who says I do and that I still parade around in it at night, despite the fact it was made to fit a 7 year old, is lying).
So I suppose when trying to concoct this fiction (or lie as you might call it) I had just thought about what thing I would want to steal and gone with that. I even remember the teacher quizzing me about this untruth. At the time I thought I had done a great job of my fabrication, but now, looking back, I'm guessing she had spotted my clever ruse and was actually having a bit of a laugh by following things up. I earnestly told her that the police were speculating that the burglar probably had a small son and had stolen the uniform for him. My teacher nodded and said she could see that that was probably the case. She was just as big a liar as me and in no position to criticise me.
It's interesting that this incident should stick so vividly in my mind. I suppose it was the time where I learnt the power of words and the imagination and maybe had some pride in my powers of deception. It's like the time (which I think I've recounted) that I did a little puppet show behind the sofa and made my mum and grandma laugh. I remember it because I liked the feeling I got at creating this response (though again of course, my mum and gran would have been laughing at me, rather than with me).
It's interesting how early our vocation makes itself apparent.
Tonight the show went really well (and though I tried to cut stuff out, it ran to about 100 minutes), which is good cos there were plenty of journalists in. For once they'd seen one of the better performances.
Unless everyone was still humouring me, like my mum and my gran and my primary school teacher.
