life

The Distracted, Mardy Kid with the Busy Brain

As part of any neurodivergence assessment they ask you about the school years. It tests the memory, but it all gradually comes back. Primary school was harder to recall with it being about 40 years ago. But I did remember the frequent trouble I got into with one teacher when I was 8/9. I didn’t think I could do anything to please him. I frequently got into trouble, not for anything serious, but for impulsively calling out, not following instructions properly, trying too hard to please, getting distracted too easily. 

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) is a big part of ADHD. It’s extreme emotional pain from perceived or actual rejection, criticism, or failure, causing deep sadness and mood swings. I cried a lot and got called ‘mardy’ frequently at school in the 1980s, which I now attribute to RSD.

With Mr Howitt, the feeling that I was always pissing him off was off the scale. This had an adverse effect on me where not saying anything at all in class became the norm. The teacher I had in year 5 commented that he’d forget I was there half the time. I was that quiet. (Masking who I really was started early). The same teacher, incidentally, had previously shouted at me for kicking stones in the playground when he was trying to give a speech. I was clearly bored by what he was saying, and the stimulation of kicking stones was preferable.

Thankfully I still have my secondary school reports from 1990 to 1993. The word that pops up a lot in my 1990 report is ‘conscientious’ – wishing to do one’s work or duty well and thoroughly. Which is fair. I wanted to do well. I wanted to please. (ADHDers are generally people pleasers). I tried hard. I also get a lot of comments about being ‘pleasant’, ‘nice’, ‘polite’, and ‘bright’.

Mr Gudgeon, maths, said ‘I was very quiet’. I never asked for help. People with ADHD tend to not ask for help because they fear appearing incompetent. A misguided perfectionism makes you believe you should be able to do it all yourself. 

I came 7th in the exams, which meant I missed out on Set 1. A knock to my confidence, but it was probably for the best. I remember being distracted a lot in his class, he didn’t have the authority he should have. We had some big personalities there. When it was kicking off I’d look out the window and watch the gulls feasting on discarded chip cobs.

I needed to ‘show greater determination’ in music, according to a teacher whose name rhymed with raper. Well, sir, if you took your eyes and hands off the girls for a second, you’d see we only had battered old xylophones to work with. I can’t remember a smidgeon of what he taught us about music. I knew the opening to ‘Oh When the Saints’, but so did everyone else.

In 1991, my maths teacher said the ‘presentation of my work required attention’ – it needed to be in a ‘sensible and logical form’. In science, I had ‘little confidence in my own abilities’. In humanities, I apparently lost my enthusiasm and determination. My written work had become ‘shallow’ and lacking in detail. I needed to show more effort. Mr Raynor, in CDT, slates me. I need to make more effort and concentrate on my own work. (Your lessons were shit, sir, and so was your beard). 

Raper goes after me again. A lack of planning in the early stages shows up in my final performances. What final performances? 

In 1992, my form tutor commented on the need for ‘more detailed revision’. In maths, I’ve had ‘disappointing’ test results and I need to develop a more efficient method of revision. 

In Chemistry, I need to put more care and thought into my homework. In contrast to subjects I was engaged with like RE, bizarrely, the teacher was impressed with my thoroughness and research. But, in Physics, I was capable of doing better. In geography, excellent marks, but occasionally work isn’t such a ‘high standard’ and I need to show more care. Ms Hallsworth seems to suggest I get it, but I can’t be bothered. In French, the first two tests were decent, and the last one ‘rather disappointing’. My oral was acceptable, apparently… (Stop it. She was about 70).

In 1993, lovely Ms Briggs said I’m pleasant and have a ‘serious attitude’ when it comes to English. I remember her enjoying my stories and creative work. But she says I get distracted by other members of the class. In maths, my test results were ‘erratic’. In science, my results are ‘reasonable’. In geography, my written answers would benefit from ‘more careful planning and editing.’ In PE, I’m considered ‘pleasant but reserved’, but I’ve got a ‘good physique’ – erm, thanks sir, kind of you to notice… insert awkward emoji.

In 1994, they stopped handwriting reports, and instead chose statements from a computer programme that matched the pupil’s personality and ability. Except, many of us would end up with very similar reports.

In conclusion, wherever there’s a whiff of planning, strategy, organisation, revision, there is a problem. I recoil at all of those words. There’s also often a lack of care and attention to detail. I make simple mistakes. I forget what I’m asked to do. For example, we’d be told to write our homework out in our diaries. I wouldn’t bother. ‘I’ll remember later…’ But I didn’t because of poor executive function. I got away with it, thanks to friends reminding me on the day it was due. I’d often be doing homework on the bus, even art work in my sketch book. If I didn’t do the homework, I’d plead that I didn’t understand the task, and ask for help. I never got a single detention. If I wasn’t interested in the subject I would zone out, but I wonder, as I was well-behaved, if this was why I wasn’t considered having an issue. 

There wasn’t half as much assessment in the nineties as there is now. There were no records showing patterns of performance, and as a result no intervention could be made. However, there were far more extreme cases who needed help. I was capable, they knew that, but it was virtually impossible for me to summon up any sort of interest and enthusiasm for maths, science, music, CDT…

Even on the morning of an exam I’d be made aware of details I should have revised. I hadn’t remembered. I try to cram it in in the short space of time I have. I hadn’t clocked or understood what I needed to plan for. Ahead of some exams I thought nothing of staying up into the early hours to watch a World Cup football match (USA 1994).

I never publicly asked for help. I feared looking stupid and being laughed at. I couldn’t bear the humiliation – even a simple plea for clarity over a task. Perhaps I didn’t want to be exposed as a fraud. I wasn’t as clever as I believed. The disorganisation was never addressed. I thought it was just who I was, and somehow things would work out. The teachers didn’t pick me up on it. And, yet, the signs were there. As difficult as they were to spot.

My GCSE results were not what was expected. Just one A, two Bs, four Cs. D in English language was hard to take, the paper confused me (and I’m sure it would have been explained in class). I also left the exam early because I’d got so anxious I developed a migraine. The science results were a disaster, not that I had tried. 

I felt I was just as intelligent as my peers, who had got straight As, but they got to grips with what had to be done when it disappeared from mind instantly.

I had to resit maths, and eventually I got a C, after I finally bothered trying to understand the equations. I learned my lesson with English, at A-Level. I was much better prepared. As it was largely literature based I engaged with it more. History, however, I completely flunked, getting ‘ungraded’. Again, I hadn’t tried. I was so bored with it. I put in zero effort even though it meant failing. I left with two Bs, the other in art. I could have done much better.

But then again, beating yourself up is classic ADHD. Feelings of shame and guilt are common. And still are 40 years later!

He’s Leaving Home…

It’s crept up on me… well, I say crept. It’s more like a grizzly bear gaining on me, and I’m legging it, heart going like the clappers, but it’s about to trip me up with a swipe of its giant paw.

What am I on about? 

My eldest is nearing adulthood, and probably leaving home in about a year’s time. 

Despite the late night ‘let’s-shit-dad-up’ shenanigans (jumping out of my wardrobe or standing in the dark in the corner of a room) I’m really going to miss him. That doesn’t sound strong enough. I’ll be devastated. Things are never going to be the same again. I don’t want to think about it, but I’m going to have to. 

I’m already in grief that George and his brother Toby, are not little lads anymore. I had a dream where they said goodbye, and I woke up crying. I’m welling up as I write. 

George arrived following the tragedy of our first son dying at birth. I never thought we’d recover. Thanks to the bravery and strength of my wife, we kept trying. When the blue line appeared it was met with deep breaths… we can do this. 

I suffered with the daily anxiety of what if it happens to us again? To cope, I took up ‘Emotional Freedom Techniques’ – this involves tapping parts of your body to restore energy flow. Sounds like utter bollocks. Probably is. But it did distract from the little voice telling me another catastrophe was around the corner. Maybe that’s the point.

Any headache, discomfort, swelling, and sickness my wife suffered, or if the baby hadn’t moved for like five minutes, I’d freak out.

During the difficult times, before George was born, I wrote in my journal, ‘I just want to be a dad’. That’s all that mattered. I didn’t care about money, wealth, or my career. To be a dad was all I cared about. 

The pregnancy was smooth. Despite my future predictions, it couldn’t have gone better. The due date came, and George arrived in the early hours of the next day. 

I don’t remember him crying, just looking around the room, blinking, dazzled and confused, before settling into the comfort and safety of his mother’s arms, and then, later, mine. The joy of seeing him, safe, healthy, alive, was pure joy. 

He was quite an anxious baby. Once you left him to sleep, as hard as you tried to creep out, he’d wake up and cry. There were various pieces of advice about leaving them to ‘self soothe’, but bollocks to that. I remember watching the whole of the 3hr film, The Lives of Others, while George slept on my chest. 

I saw a comedian recently and he made a quip about the Titanic submersible. Whatever you feel about that, he made a good point, the father who took his son on that trip had one job, when he entered this world, to keep him alive. And despite his massive wealth he couldn’t do that. He put him in a stupidly dangerous situation. 

This is the job. Keep them alive. But also, of course, make sure you don’t let them become an asshole. I’m pleased to say he’s a great lad, and plenty have said so.

He’s looked after me too. We had season tickets for Forest, and during one match I was ill with tonsilitis. Not that I knew it. I thought it was a cold. The poor kid thought I was going to die as I shivered, pale, in the winter weather as we saw out a 1-0 win against Wigan.

They said it’d go fast. It has. There’s a bottle of wine for him when he turns 18. I thought I’d present it to him in the distant future when I’m old and gray. Well, I’ll admit the latter. 

I couldn’t wait to leave for university. To my shame I didn’t think of anyone else’s feelings. Least of all my mum’s. I was due to go on Saturday, but it was Mum’s busiest day in her shop. She asked if I could go a day later so she could help me settle in. I’m sure it would have been fine, but I refused to wait a day more. Dad took me on his own. I didn’t want any fuss. He told me he was proud of me, a punch on the arm, and £20 to buy some beer. I later learned Mum went to Matlock Bath, one of her favourite places, and cried, and cried, for her little boy who’d left home. 

I get it now. 

George mentioned Falmouth University. I put it on the map, and it showed an 11 hour journey by public transport. Maybe not, mate. He’s looking at sensible places now, within a few hours at least.

The last thing I’d want for my boys is to feel they have to stay. Just for us. Home will be home. Always. But I also understand the depressing thought of remaining in the same place. I can’t imagine living where my secondary school is still in daily view. 

I needed to leave home, and I don’t regret coming back, it’s what has to happen in so many ways. It’ll just feel like our hearts have been slapped about. 

Maybe when that bear catches up it’ll just give me a lick and I’ll give it a salmon, if that makes sense. It might not be that bad in other words.

We’ll see.

Sorry Jarvis…

There’s a line in Spike Island, Pulp’s new song – ‘The universe shrugged, shrugged then moved on.’ It’s been taken as a comment on Jarvis Cocker’s and Pulp’s own popularity – after reaching the very top in 1995 / 96, they were swiftly heading back down without anyone really noticing. I can’t help feeling I let Jarvis down, ditching him for the ‘cool’ kids.

Pulp was the first band I ever related to. The songs were about the stuff I knew, I saw, I lived. A working class life. Jarvis would have loved the gossip in Hair by Melanie, my mum’s little corner shop hairdressers. She never knew I was listening, but I banked all the stories I shouldn’t have heard. Sex on pool tables after last orders, 30-year-old virgins being ‘shown the way’, customers discussing illicit affairs and inappropriate crushes. 

When I first heard Babies, I thought, yep, I would have definitely hid inside that wardrobe. Talking of which, this reminds me in a roundabout way of being invited into a friend’s bedroom while she and two other girls got changed for a night out. They didn’t see me like the other lads. I was like some benign asexual being deemed to have no interest in tits whatsoever. Well, I did, and I was so shocked at seeing the much discussed breasts of Emily Craven (not real name) reflected in the wardrobe mirror, that I didn’t even tell any of my mates. I kept it to myself. Maybe it didn’t really happen. 

Disco 2000. Fully experienced that. Watching the girls I had fallen for, the ones I had entertained, made laugh, supported and listened to, go off with someone with one brain cell and the personality of a sea slug. But he looks like Ryan Giggs, while I looked like Jonny Briggs, so, you know… can’t compete there. 

I always felt like an outsider. I was in the Misshapes gang, for sure. I remember reading the manifesto on the insert inside the CD single and thinking, ‘I’m on your side Jarvis’ and I couldn’t be prouder. I certainly got picked on at school and outside. I wasn’t afraid to tell people that I loved art, comics and a bit of Beethoven. The only reason I probably didn’t get beaten up was because I played football. Not that I was particularly good at it. Being a nerd and into football don’t usually go together. I stopped short of ever feeling the need to properly stand out. When my dad’s Colombian girlfriend bought me a knitted rucksack, with Aztec patterns, I politely declined the gift and gave it to my sister. ‘But all the boys in Paris have them.’ Can you imagine turning up for school, in Hucknall, with that on my back? During my university years, I once went back into Hucknall wearing a long Matrix-style leather jacket. I thought I looked magnificent and fucking cool. As soon as I stepped off the bus I got called ‘gay’.

Sorted for Es and Whizz. I never had the guts to do drugs. The Leah Betts story absolutely killed that for me. (Clearly all the stories about the alcohol related deaths did not). Despite the tabloid froth it was never a celebration about drugs, hence the last line of the song. I never had any desire to go to a rave either. Being given a map and location of the said rave would only lead to me being kidnapped and my kidneys cut out and sold. I’ve never wanted to be lost. A healthy mindset, perhaps. During an overnight outdoors ‘fun’ exercise for youth groups, I, the map reader, managed to get our team lost in the dark of Sherwood Forest. We arrived at a road, no sign of the hundreds of people taking part, and I remember thinking, ‘we’re dead, we’re absolutely fucked.’ So, a rave. No thanks. What the song does remind me of is the feeling that it wasn’t long before I could escape, before life would happen for me. Listening to Sorted in the car with a mate, dark fields around us, post-industrial, post-mining, post-anything Hucknall in the distance. It would soon all be left behind for a new life.

So much has been written about Common People, rightly so. I recognised a lot in the song, but it wasn’t as poignant as when I started university. Suddenly there were proper middle-class kids who had their own cars, paid-for gym memberships, not having to work because Daddy paid for it all. No full student grant? No bother. Why do Safeway when you can go to Waitrose? I remember having to put my mum’s income into my grant forms and feeling embarrassed for her.

I wanted to be Jarvis. At Rock City’s student nights I would pretend to be him and I didn’t care what anyone thought. I saw him and Pulp at the same venue and it still remains one of my favourite gigs, just because it was him and them. It should have carried on like that, but ahem, something changed (sorry). Regrettably I fell in with the group who, at school, would have shot darts at me from the back of the class. The sort who kicks your ball over the fence. ‘Fetch that y’ twat’. We’re talking Oasis here, of course. I fell for the lure of the troublemakers. I didn’t want to miss out. It felt like the cool kids had welcomed you in. A bit like when I was invited to red base, at school, during a wet break. But like red base you never really felt like you belonged. Knebworth was a fantastic experience, but largely for reasons that weren’t Oasis. I was with my best mate John for a start, the last time we spent time together before he went to university. The last adventure. I assumed this was it for us (We’re still mates 30 years on). I also saw for the first time, the Manics and The Charlatans, two bands who still mean so much more to me than Oasis ever did. 

That evening, I remember looking around as the front pen got more crowded and seeing Dennis Wise. Proof if ever than I didn’t belong with this lot.  It should have finished there really. After that day. But they limped on and on. And yes, I bought Be Here Now. 

Pulp released This is Hardcore during my first year at uni. I had a poster of Different Class Jarvis flicking the Vs on my wall. I bought the album as soon as it was released. It wasn’t His ‘n’ Hers or Different Class. Much darker. It reflected my mood at the time. Sad, lonely, pretty miserable. I liked it, but it wasn’t the same. I still have trouble getting through it. My interest dwindled. I didn’t bother with We Love Life. I only bought the Greatest Hits when it was on offer at HMV for a fiver. I didn’t go to the Sherwood Pines gig which looking back would have been amazing. The solo albums were ok. I loved Jarvis’ shows on Six Music or any interview he does. I even named my dog after him. His book Good Pop, Bad Pop is brilliant. An ingenious way of telling his life story through objects he’s taken from house to house in plastic bags, stored away in the attic. I’ll have to do my own version. Why I’ve kept the A-Team sticker album is a mystery.

In one of the many recent articles about Pulp’s new album (which is superb by the way) it said history has been kind to them. I think that’s true. They’re the only ones who have survived ‘Britpop’ with any real credibility. 

I never thought I’d get the chance to see Jarvis and Pulp perform again. You know when you get a sweat-on trying to purchase tickets, the fear that it’s all going to crash before you hit pay? That. Take my money. I’ll look at the price later. 

So swivel.