COMPETITION

Autobiography

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1391 you were asked for a true recollection of your own child- hood featuring a memorable adult.

My books are in packing cases, but I can recall vividly without recourse to them Cellini's curious anecdote at the beginning of his autobiography. His father made him look hard at the fire, and pointed out to him a live salamander in the glowing coals. As the little boy was marvelling, he re- ceived a sharp cuff on the ear. His father said, 'I have hit you, my son, so that you will always remember seeing the salaman- der.' He then kissed him and gave him sixpence.

Asking you to tell the truth was a gamble of course, but I threw away my lie-detector and believed every word you wrote. It was touching to see some of the most hard- boiled jesters breaking into sentimental reminiscences about schoolmasters, nan- nies and uncles, though parents almost never featured as memorable. Perhaps in their case familiarity breeds amnesia. Three of you described early encounters with the famous (Kipling, Jack Dempsey and Smuts), but the best name-dropper was Andrew McEvoy, who gets given the last bonus bottle of Veuve Clicquot Gold Label 1979 Vintage Champagne, the gift of National Economic Research Associates Inc., who in turn receive our heartiest thanks for their generous sponsorship over 12 weeks. The winners printed below earn £10 apiece.

It was the summer of '42. I was 13 and staying with an honorary aunt and uncle at Hassocks, where amiable grass-snakes sunned themselves on the lawn. One morning, expending precious petrol, we drove to Brighton, where 'Aunt' shopped, while 'Uncle' and I called at a dingy maisonette in Hove – something about 'helping the old boy with his tax'. While 'Uncle' sat and clucked over a confusion of papers, the 'old boy' (a phrase in this instance curiously exact) ciceroned me around the photos that coated his walls – all, oddly, of himself in gilded youth. Then, suddenly, he cried 'Look!' and, an ex- ultant conjuror, brandished a tin of Nescafe Forties gold-dust. This a crabby housekeeper proceeded to 'make'. It seemed nectar; but as, later, he waved us off with a fluted 'Come again!', I did not realise that I was the benefici- ary of one of the few unprovokedly generous acts of which, in a long life, Lord Alfred Douglas was ever guilty.

(Andrew McEvoy) I shall never forget old Pope at the corner shop. Grey beard, grey flannel shirt, corduroy trousers held up by what the old man called 'a bit of band', bad stammer and dreadful temper. I had a halfpenny to spend. I stood in the shop, my eye falling lovingly on every jar on every shelf. I climbed on to the treacle keg to inspect the goodies on the counter. I rolled my halfpenny up and down in an agony of indeci- sion.

Old Pope shuffled his way round to my side and lifted me up. I thought he very kindly wanted me to see better. Not so, though. He carried me out of the shop and deposited me on the pavement.

`Th-th-there,' he said, 't-t-tak thi b-b-bloody meg s-s-somewhere else.'

I felt quite offended at the time. I was only five.

(N.E.Soret) Norman was Important — a status seldom confer- red on my sister's boyfriends. (Years later I realised he was an importer.) Murmurings of 'I' and 'shame' further worked on my childish logic until I took umbrage at being sent early to bed.

They caught me, drawing-room key in hand, in the act of spying.

`Oh-ho!' boomed Norman, lifting me, stiff with panic, to within a few inches of his polished face.

The eyes mesmerised me. One laughed while the other glowered; one searched, the other stared; one twinkled, the other was dead as a doll's. He was kindness itself and gave me half-a-crown, but nothing mattered except that horrifying encounter with a real, dead glass eye.

It haunted my dreams until I dared to ask `What happened to Norman?' He looked through a keyhole,' Mother replied swiftly. `Don't you ever do such a thing.'

And I never did. (Mary Ann Moore) Colonel Henry Wyman Fisher Clay, but to me Uncle Tom.

Sometime chairman of Nuneaton Rugby Football Club, an absurdly loveable figure who had seen the wrong side of twenty stones, he had bucked the doctor's direst threats with charac- teristic indifference. Reckless: he was a diabetic. And an alcoholic. Indeed, my christening — he was my godfather — was probably a rare occasion upon which he looked affectionately at water.

But a generous soul. His hospitality did not depend upon his guests' allegiance to a particu- lar sort of ball. Some Coventry City supporters, invited one winter evening to his home, pilfered his hock. 'Dropped bottles in the snow,' he told me. 'Found them next morning. Perfectly chil- led. So I drank them.' At 14 one summer, I spotted, through his windows, an unkempt hat. It was abandoned in long grass. He turned his sad eyes towards me, and they sparkled.

'My snowman from last Christmas,' he said. 'Have a boiled egg.'

(Bill Greenwell) 'Bang Bang' was the only adult who allowed us to play cowboys and Indians with him. From Monday to Friday, his apache shrieks could be heard summoning us, his braves, to a war council in the waste ground behind the cemet- ery. The entrance fee was sixpence and entitled one to a dance around the totem pole. For an extra penny he led us on a war-path around the town, attacking Fort Talbot (the library) and Wells Fargo (the post office).

The other boys said 'Bang Bang' had fought in the desert with Peter O'Toole but my father told me he was 'just a half-wit who doesn't know his arse from his elbow'. Anyway, I liked him, not least because he allowed me to drink his 'Indian fire-water', which made me feel very giddy and brave. My mother said it was the 'fire-water'