‘Adventures In Self-Esteem’

An interview with Sir Mole Cleethorpes.

"Sir Mole Cleethorpes, are you a smokescreen?"

"I may well be. But given the nature of human psychology, how would I know? Its very difficult when one is bombarded by these images constantly to discover who I am."

"Your parents must surely be to blame."

"My parents gave me a name and in the grand scheme of things a roof over my head, which was handy if you wanted to spend your early years locked in a building in fear for your own safety listening to two narcissists shouting at each other.."

"But there was a roof?"

"Certainly there was a roof. I managed to get onto it. Quite an achievement at the age of four but Father didn’t think so."

"Your Father discovered you?"

"He discovered me on the roof. He never discovered me. He took very little interest in me at all really. It was very much a case of being sent to your room with a boiled egg after being told to shut up and keep out of it."

"Did you make any further escape attempts?"

"Yes – I remember confronting my parents at the breakfast table at the age of seven and saying ‘This is unacceptable. I’m off’ and I marched from the house with my Action Man in a carrier bag and eleven minutes later I was in Father’s car being driven 150 miles to a boarding school in the Oxfordshire countryside. Father roared into the car park, deposited me next to a small suitcase and drove away again.

Were you welcomed by the School?

No. They had no idea I was coming. I was sat in a small waiting room, given a cup of tea by a Mrs Featherstone, a kindly old woman and some two hours later the school managed to get Father on the phone and I was informed that if I were to apologise, acquiesce if you like, to his ‘power’ he would be prepared to leave the Public House he was drinking in - at closing time – unless there was a ‘lock in’ and the next day or perhaps the day after he could collect me and take me back home and the crime I had committed of voicing my feelings would be, not forgiven but not made reference to again."

"And how did you respond?"

"Fuck off cunty, I think. All these years later I still believe that’s what I said."

"And your father?"

"He put the phone down and the next thing I knew, I was a fully paid up member of a minor Independent prep school."

"Your Headmaster took pity on you?"

"No. I think he saw an opportunity."

"Your Headmaster was an abuser of children?"

"Well this is now legally documented and I'm sure that’s why he went into it, yes. So I was forced to run the gauntlet between him and Father O’Wanky.."

"O’Wanky?"

"The school chaplain. That’s what we called him – you know the sort of small act of rebellion typical of boys locked in a small brick building in the care of predatory adults hundreds of miles from home."

"Your Father made a transaction. He paid the school, in effect to take the duty of care out of his hands."

"Yes. I was very grateful. Often the only thing Father would countenance doing with his own hands was to hit me with them."

"But he still paid the fees?"

"Good lord no! I spent a peaceful night at the school and attended a meeting first thing next morning with the Headmaster who took some polaroids of my bottom and I was informed I was being provided with a scholarship and full board and that I should do my very best to listen to everything he ever said because he knew what was best for me."

"And you took him at his word?"

"Certainly not. But I did consider it a better option than remaining home with Father and Mother. So I shook his hand and said ‘It’s a deal’ and an older boy gave me a tour of the school and its surroundings during which he gave me a certain look which I understood to be a coded message."

"He didn’t use words?"

"I understand that he was in a state of fear and that this was not to be communicated verbally but whilst showing me my boarding house he did express a message, which came from his eyes."

"What was the message?"

"It was to the effect of ‘watch your step round here mate.’ I gave him a look in return which said in no uncertain terms ‘Thankyou. I will.’ In my room in the boarding house I opened my suitcase to find it completely empty except for a note written in Father’s childish scrawl."

"And what did it say?"

"It said ‘There’s nothing in this suitcase and you will amount to nothing.’ Then he’d put in capital letters the word COWARD. And that was the end of it."

"What were your feelings about this?"

"I allowed myself no feelings and took it as a parting shot, a final, pathetic attempt to assert his authority - a psychological trick, to place deep within my self-conscious the instruction that I should be a failure in life."

"Sir Mole Cleethorpes, thanks ever so."