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My name's Tim Baverstock. Timothy Owen Baverstock, to be strictly accurate. My father wanted to use the Welsh version, (which I learned as 'Yayan' /'yI-yn/, perhaps a misreading of 'Yvain' from 'Owain'), but my mother stopped him, something for which I should probably be overwhelmingly grateful. My twin brother (non-identical, seven minutes earlier) was going to be called Simon Piers Baverstock, but ended up as Simon William. The Methodist Sunday School I went to as a child somehow managed to confuse Simon's and my middle names, so I have an Old King James version of the Bible, with moderately cringy pictures and decidedly 16th century English, which was given to `Timothy William Baverstock' to get him interested in Jesus. I don't think I opened it much, although the hellfire and damnation picture in Revelations was pretty good.

I was born on July 27th 1970, at 11.25pm, in the right-hand master bedroom of 21 Woodford Bridge Road, Ilford (as you look at it from the front), which eventually became my and my brother's shared room until we were considered old enough to need our own rooms and were moved to the other master bedroom, which had been sectioned into two rooms and a short passageway. While in our shared room, we slept in bunk beds, initially arranged atop each other, allowing the one on the bottom to irritate or amuse the one above by pushing into the bottom of the matress, through the sprung metal lattice, with his feet. Most of the time, I remember this being funny. The one on top couldn't retaliate much, except to hang over the edge and try to hit the one below. Which was also funny, of course.

Because I suffered from fairly bad eczema as a child (indeed, I still suffer slightly, although it's mostly stress-related these days) a bunk-bed wasn't much fun for my brother, because my scratching would rock the bed. I imagine this was at least part of the reason that the beds were eventually put side by side, with a length of hardboard between them to form a partition. This effectively split the room in two, although the partition was only three or four feet high. My side was the one with the door, Simon had the side with the window. Eventually, we settled on a territorial nag-phrase: `get off my side' which was pretty much sung to the sort of rhythm chiming clocks manage, although the tune only descended. Evidently, I was able to shout this at Simon when he tried to use the door, particularly if I was feeling belligerent. I can't quite remember why I ever needed to go to Simon's side. Probably to steal his comics.

I'm reminded that I used to enjoy making my bed so that the sheets and blanket were so tight I had to ease in from the top - none of that 'turned down corner' stuff. I imagine my brother used to do the same, because I can certainly remember getting down at the bottom and him sitting on the top so I couldn't get out, and I can't imagine I didn't do the same to him. Now, of course, I have a duvet. Not nearly as much fun.

Oh, and we pulled the lounge chairs over onto their front legs and arms, propping them against another chair, and make a fort from them - building cushion walls and fighting between the fabric-covered springs under the seats, sometimes unhooking the springs and then fighting. We sometimes took the biscuit tin in there too, I think.

I can't place the incident, but Simon and I were on or in our beds one Saturday morning, when there was this very loud BANG BANG from the radiator, and it shook, even bent, looking like a musclebound superhero was punching it hard from behind. Terrifying. Eventually, the rivets popped out of the middle, and this hot water squirted out, soaking Simon's bed, mum was abruptly there with a big bathsheet, trying to mop, if not staunch, the flow. I don't know whether we really ever found out what it was about, but I think it was before the kitchen fire.

Each week, dad would bring us home our comics and some sweets. Helen had `Bunty for Girls' (which I occasionally stole and read, because `The Four Marys' was actually pretty good), Simon had The Dandy initially, and then Whizzer and Chips, when he wanted a more mature comic. I had The Beano, and then Buster (with my favourite story, `The Leopard from Lime Street' - Billy Farmer, the boy bitten by a radioactive leopard). I can't remember which sweets the others were given, but I recall always having `Mint Cracknel', which was something like an entire chocolate bar made from melted-together Matchmakers - chocolate with crunchy mint sugar crystals.

I don't recall my older sister, Helen (Louise `Helen-touise') being shouted at for going on either of our sides. She had a room of her own, behind the other master bedroom, and she didn't read our comics (at least, she didn't steal them that we ever found out), so that's probably why. Helen and I seem to be much more alike than Simon and I. We're both fairly bookish, and we seem to think similarly. I even have the same choice in earrings, which makes them handy presents for her. I hasten to add that I don't wear earrings, although I mean to imply no express disapproval of those men who do, and I'm prepared to affirm earings as a valid lifestyle choice for men who like that sort of thing dangling from their earlobes. Ow. Ow. Can you stop twisting my arm now, please?

I remember attending a nursery, which was either upstairs in the hall at St George's (Anglican) Church, near Gants Hill tube station, or in the hall at a different church, on a road starting midway between Gants Hill and Redbridge stations, towards Ilford. I imagine it was all pretty normal - undifferentiated white neighbourhood - and the only remarkable person was a kid who I think was called Thomas, who had deformed arms and hands. I don't know whether he was a Thalidomide(?sp) baby; that seems unlikely since this would have been around 1974.

My Infant school was Redbridge Infants' School (although I'm sure it used to be Redbridge Primary School), a modest one-story building with a playing field easily able to accommodate its two junior-sized football pitches. The building was square, and held a quadrangle in the middle, where the school's small swimming pool and changing rooms lived. All the classrooms ran around the outside of the building, about six to a side, and a corridor ran along its inside, giving access to the quadrangle in the middle of each of the four sides. The rearmost side of the square held cloakrooms, the staffroom, the library, and the room where the nurse used to be, when she checked us for nits, ocular problems, or whatever else. This side of the square had a covered way which eventually led to the playground, past the toilets and the sports equipment room/hut. (The funny thing about the sports room was that it smelt of hot dogs, which were always cooked for the annual Parents' Association Fête. I seem to recall that the fête equipment was also kept in there, but can't imagine that they put the hot dog stuff away dirty. There must have been a severe spill of hot dog water, I suppose. I liked the smell though, and hot dog water's scent always takes my mind back there.)

The playground was pretty well sized, perhaps half the size of the school building. Its ground was something like concrete, and it had netball courts painted on, and painted cricket wickets on the surrounding brick walls. Topping the ten foot walls were stout metal mesh nets, which were supposed to prevent balls from escaping into the neighboring houses' gardens, but which were also just the right size to seize and hold unwary tennisballs.

My first teacher was Miss Weakes, later Mrs Crouch. She was a gem, although most of my memories of her class involve playing with the silver (fine) sand in the tray, pouring it through the mill. Mrs Cross was fearsome, although when I was actually in her class, she was fine too. I think it was probably her name which made us all scared of her. I also remember a Mrs Fox.

For some reason, I was frequently confused between Tuesday and Friday. The most noteworthy incident resulting from this was during Junior school, when I sat down on the wall at the corner of the road leading to school, intending to wait for my mother to take me to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children at lunchtime. Even if it had been Friday, I should clearly still have gone into school to wait for her to come and collect me, but somehow that connection wasn't made by my brain, so it was only when some other mothers found me, as they walked away from the school gates, that I went to school that day.

Similarly, at my secondry school, Bancroft's (who I'm pleased to note have used the historic year-names for their preparatory classes in the new section of the school), I effectively played hookey on Tuesday afternoon, trying to go to a dentist appointment which was on Friday. Entertainingly, I tried to apologise for this to my form tutor, but it became evident that nobody had missed me at all. As it happens, I never really found school sufficiently uninteresting to feel a need to escape early, although, it was mandatory to try and catch the very earliest bus possible after school finished (probably so as to be able to watch the Children's TV programmes). This was often a delayed bus, intended to pick up the kids from the school just down the road, so by the time it reached there, it was already full of Bancroftians. The Bancroft's bus stop was often so crowded that a few of us would try running down the hill to the earlier stop, eventually finding a short cut across the field to get there even earlier. This was mainly a tactic for finding a seat. I gave all that up when I started staying late for clubs and things (Electronics Club and Computer Club).

Another confusion incident happened early on in Infant school, when I mistook afternoon break for going-home time. Deciding the teacher wasn't following the script properly (she'd told us to leave our toys as we went outside) I secreted my plastic bagatelle under my anorak, and started walking down alongside the building, to go home. I was stopped by an (apparently) furious headmistress, Mrs Dunton, rat-a-tat-tatting on the window of her office, and frowning fiercely at me. Nothing came of that, except that I felt very guilty, and ran back to the playground, resenting the toy that I still had under my coat.

Although I no longer confuse Tuesday and Friday, I do still find myself failing to make fairly simple deductions occasionally.

My father, Rodney William Reginald Baverstock, died when I was eight, from a cyst on his kidney bursting unexpectedly, cancelling the plans for the family to move to live in Munich, where the European Patent Office was opening. I loved and admired him an awful lot, and I suspect I've suppressed a lot of my feelings from his death, not knowing how to deal with them as a child. I do know that I stopped going to Gants Hill Methodist Church, where mum went, in an attempt to punish God for taking my father away, although God never seemed to notice, or bothered to try and get in touch while I was watching Open University programmes instead.

Dad was fantastic (although I'll still be remembering him through the mind of an eight year old) and was far more patient than I am. He had a PhD in Organic Chemistry, I think from Manchester, supplementing his Chemistry BSc from Bristol (1958-61), and he was a patent examiner at the Patent Office in London. He used to spend ages talking to me while I took emulsifying baths for my eczema. I remember him telling me how molecules bonded, and bearing with endless what-if questions. It's a tragedy that he wasn't able to see the rise of home computers, because he'd certainly have thrown himself fully into them. I was startled recently to learn that he could speak Anglo Saxon, because I've been developing an interest in that topic, quite independently of him. I don't recall him ever mentioning it, so it seems odd that we should both interest ourselves in a relatively obsure topic like that. I would point out that I'm also going to an Anglican Church, like he did, but I don't think that's nearly as spooky as the Saxon.

Dad's death was sudden. Simon and I were getting ready for school, when there was a thud. Mum called up the stairs whether everyone was all right. I think she knew something was wronger than a normal thud, because she ran up the stairs, and found dad collapsed on the floor. Simon and I ran in, with Helen. I remember saying `Oh, daddy' in my best eight-year-old reprimanding his father for messing around, sort of voice, but mum phoned the amulance, had the neighbour take us to school, and that was the last time I ever saw him. When I came home, that afternoon, I knocked on the door. Mum said `I have something to tell out about daddy'. I came out with `Oh, is he dead?' (I don't have the first idea why), to which she replied `yes', and took me into the lounge, where Simon and Helen were already, crying.

The fact that I tried to tell dad off for being on the ground and moaning haunted me for a number of years, despite mum's having told us that he said he loved us very much, in the Ambulence. I wish I'd had the chance to know him better, as an adult.

Dad smoked a pipe, which I don't think I remember, but certainly smoked Hamlet cigars, usually each Friday evening. It was always fun to sit on his lap, usually with Simon, and vigorously waft at the smoke he puffed out, saying `oh lully lully' or somesuch. It was a nice smelling smoke, and I believe he usually made smokerings for us when we asked. I don't believe dad smoked cigarettes, but I recall one afternoon in Epping Forest, walking through it with my relations, come up for Christmas, that dad was smoking a serious thick cigar, and I asked to try it. My aunt tells me I was almost sick; I only recall recalling coughing a lot, but I've never taken up smoking.

Watching Dr Who usually involved sitting behind dad, and looking around at the TV from behind him. I can't remember where the two unable to fit behind dad at the same time, sat. I vaguely recall mum being unsatisfactory for sitting behind, although I'm not sure why.

I distinctly recall Saturdays involving tea in the lounge, with sponge cake, the whole family and Nana Rose (my mother's sister's husband's mother, Rose Moxon), watching TV, I think immediately after having had a bath. Dukes of Hazard, I think, Family Fortunes, The Generation Game. Good times.

With my father's death, mum had to take care of all three of us. It was a good thing that she'd been pursuing her own career, because she had to take it full-time. I shudder when I realise that I'm now older than she was at that time, at what a loss and burden she bore. Most of my memories are of being told off, though, usually for things which Simon did. It seems likely that I just gave up trying to protest my innocence, and just said `sorry' for every incident. I'm not sure what long-term effect that'll have had on me, but I'm sure it's not good.

That's not to say that I didn't do bad things. The most spectacular of these was probably taking mum's pinking shears (scissors which cut zig-zig instead of straight) and making a vertical fringe, cutting every inch or so along the bottom of the dining room curtains, to make them look pretty. Gill Richardson, our next-door neighbour says mum virtually threw me down the garden for that one. Hardly surprising.

Mum, Susan Elizabeth Baverstock, nee Drake, was pretty good to us. She let us draw on the flowery dining room wallpaper before it was stripped off, never let us go hungry (except as occasional punishment) or cold, let us play quite late in the evenings, didn't restrict our TV apart from sending us to bed (not that there was anything which would have needed restricting by today's standards), and worked pretty hard. Granted, she did make me change for school in the porch once, but I had refused to get up and dress, so that was fair enough.

Between the playground and the field (both of which we were allowed on at breaktime) were some prefabricated classrooms, and it was into the one of these closest to the dining hall that my other vague late primary school memory is set. We were doing times tables in the class of Miss M?, and I'd learned from somewhere that 12x12=144. I was very pleased with this knowledge, and so added the sum as an additional question to the twelve my teacher'd set. Taking it up, she marked a few wrong, including 12x12=144. I corrected the others, but stared at my thirteenth question, certain it was right. Taking it back for re-marking, she ticked the corrected questions, but still marked 12x12=144 wrong. I was quite upset by this, and took it back to my desk to stare at, while the rest of the class finished the sums. Eventually, I took it back up again, and said that I was sure it was right. Her response was to point at the blackboard and say `Do you see that question on the board?' 'No.' 'Then it's wrong.'

I had flights of fancy, where I marched out of her classroom and told the headmistress how evil my teacher was, or shouted at her or something. Not all the time, I hasten to add, but the injustice rankled whenever I remember the incident. Not so much now.

The dining hall ran alongside the left hand side of the school (looked at from the front), and had these wonderful heaters placed along the side, set in mesh cages to stop small fingers from being burnt. The fascination with these heaters had mostly to do with the dull pink waxy plastic straws we were given to drink our school milk through, and the way that if you pushed the straw close enough to the heater, it would shrivel up in a most satisfying way, and that if you managed to drop it on the ledge, it would smoulder with a pleasantly acrid smoke. I presume the school must have thought the kids were just keeping warm, not indulging in low-level arson.

After dad died, mum had a couple of boyfriends, a Greek man called Tassos who I think we were all amused by/at, then a carpenter from the hospital where she worked as a physiotherapist, called Dennis Gresswell.

For some reason, I disliked Dennis from the start. In fact, both Simon and Helen also disliked him, and I wish I'd made my dislike more apparent, earlier. By the time mum was seeing him regularly, it was just too late, and my hatred was seen as a problem rather than a reason to consider someone else.

Dennis too now being dead, I think I can hone my issue with him down to a single point: his insecurity. It wasn't that Dennis was `only' a carpenter, whereas my father was a Doctor of Chemistry, and it wasn't that Dennis had little formal education and that I was at a very good school. I honestly don't think I would have acquired or sustained the long-term resentment of him that I still have over matters like that.

From his own account, Dennis hasn't had a particularly good time of things. As an undiagnosed coeliac, he'd always been sickly, and I seem to recall that his father had died too, his mother having to cope with this ill boy and trying to earn a living (without, as I recall, a profession to turn to, like mum). Even so, a person is always responsible for the choices they make: circumstances can make a correct choice hard, but where there is a correct choice, it can always be taken. (Not that I always do, myself, of course.)

Dennis's insecurity meant that he was always trying to make out that he was better than he was. The sad thing was that one of the things he wasn't good at, was pretending to be good at things he wasn't good at: he lied clumsily, about things it was trivial to prove him wrong on, and even if he wasn't busy digging holes for himself, it was easy to manipulate him into affirming some fact or other as if he was an authority on the matter, and then suddenly remembering the real fact to contradict him with. Sadly, this treatment didn't drive him off.

Other friends and family seem almost universally to have been suspicious of Dennis - Grandpa wishing he could have forbidden mum from marrying him, a neighbour recounting how he wouldn't leave mum alone for a moment, a relative finding many empty bottles after his stay. I attribute my mother's suicide directly to Dennis's behaviour, and I wish they'd never met.

Since he's dead, forgiving him is something which could only benefit me, but I can't work out what forgiving him means. This irritates me.

In Junior School, the same building as the Infant School, but taken in the classes along the right hand side of the school and along the front, I was probably a bit disruptive. Certainly to the point where Mrs Stygal sat me on the desk right before her table, and gave me special books to work from. It was good that she realised that I was bored with the other kids' work. I'd rapidly progressed through all the various book colours, reaching purple-spot, and then reading all the purple-spot books. I certainly acted strangely, pretending to chew her table's corner. I learned a few years later that it was all she could do, sometimes, to keep her hands behind her, so she didn't fetch me one around the ear. My best friend of the time, Darren Skates, found himself on a similar regime, but also chewed her table.

It was probably around this time that I particularly started fantasising about being the hero of my favorite comic story, The Leopard From Lime Street. This eventually ended up being mixed with Charlie's Angels (I had a crush on Sabrina Duncan), with me being pocket-sized, and therefore usefully unobtrusive in a variety of situations where it was important for her to escape.

The 11+ was the exam whose outcome decided whether you went to the local Grammar School, or to the local Comprehensive. I passed, but mum had taken me also to sit the entrance exam at a private school, Bancroft's School, in Woodford Wells, about an hour distant by bus. (This was probably in case Simon and I had both passed or failed the 11+ and had to go to the same school, or perhaps she thought I would win a scholarship.) Although I didn't win a scholarship, I was unexpectedly awarded one of the three bursaries awarded annually by the Worshipful Company of Drapers, the trustees of the Bancroft legacy, which meant I could go to Bancroft's School for the whole of my secondary education. I don't think I quite understood the precise details about Bancroft's, because I remember talking to one of the prefects, just after the exam, about `when I come here', not `if'.

I must have been a terribly frustrating pupil at Bancroft's, at least in my first four years: my grades in Maths and Science were always 7s, 6s, sometimes 5s, (on a scale of 1-7, with 7 being outstanding, and 1-3 being ignominious `red grades'), but English, French, Geography, and History were consistent 3s, apart from a 2, given once in Geography. Worse, effort was graded A-E, A being excellent), and I managed a fair number of 7Es - outstanding achievement, no application whatsoever. I think all of those arose when the achievement was judged based on tests, and the effort from classwork.

Early on in my first or second year at Bancroft's, one of the boys couldn't remember my name, and picked `Godfrey' at random. I'd associated this with a camp character in the TV show `Are You Being Served?', and made the dreadful mistake of camping it up in response. Needless to say this was a Bad Idea(tm), and it took three years before the class bully decided that it was funnier to pick on someone else. Strangely, Anora and I became fairly good friends after that.

Probably in an effort to avoid being picked on, I started frequenting the computer club. There was an A,B,C system of membership - anyone could be a C member, and had to be supervised by an A member. B and A members needed no supervision. There was a new computer, a Compukit UK 101, in a wooden case with a perspex cover so you could see all the chips, and an accoustic coupler link to a Cambridge mainframe.

The two A members in the club at the time were Tim Lovell and Richard Birkett. Despite the fact that they were sixth formers, they were actually willing to talk to a first-year, not take the rip, and help him learn about computers. This, of course, won them instant admiration, and I spent most of my time there, just watching what the other people did, eventually being allowed to be supervised by only a B member. It must have been irritating to the other members that I'd acend to such heights of computer wizardry as:

10LET A=1
20LET A=A+1
30PRINT A
40GOTO 20
RUN

Somehow, my ability to stick my feet behind my head emerged at school. I'm a little more self-conscious now, but I was rolled up in the quad with a bunch of people enviously admiring my prowess when Mr Bromfield, my history teacher, and also my deputy housemaster, appeared, and made his disapproval known, although I can't remember exactly how.

I was quite frightened of Mr Bromfield. Mr Murray, the housemaster, was always genial, and I don't think he had to tell me off for anything more than once or twice. Mr Bromfield, however, was a keen rugby player, and could be quite intimidating, but also quite amusing. He once sat one of the smaller class members on a bookshelf, in the front of the class, where he couldn't get down, to shut him up, and he'd always deliberately mispronounce Rakesh Bhardwaj's name `Bardy-warj'. He didn't like it when I wrote an essay on Boudica in green ink, but he seemed resigned to my perpetual bad marks.

Once, after a particularly bad science lesson, I'd turned the gas tap on just before I left the room, the last class of the day (I have no idea why, because I liked him!). Thankfully, Dr Reynolds went around, checking the taps, so the room didn't fill with gas and explode when the florescent lights were turned on the next day. (Perhaps one of the cleaners would have noticed, if the arcs from her vacuum cleaner hadn't ignited it.) Needless to say, I was quite severely reprimanded by Dr Reynolds, but unbeknownst to me, he didn't take it further. When Mr Bromfield asked to see me a little while later, I assumed the very worst, and simply folded up. It turned out he was only after a response slip or some other bit of paperwork, and I'd just told him about what amounted to an (unintentional) attempt to blow up the science block and anyone with the misfortune to be around it. Seeing that I was completely cut up and fearful about it myself, and particularly since I'd even managed to spill the beans Dr Reynolds had already put in the bin, he actually did his best to comfort me, and let me off with a `that was very stupid, wasn't it?' or something similarly mild.

I think it's a shame that nobody ever explained to me that History and Geography are, at school, primarily concerned with teaching kids how to marshall and assimilate facts, and use them to convey an argument. I like to think I'd have done better if I'd understood that.

It was probably about my fourth year when I resumed going to Church. A young couple, John and Jill Webb were helping with the seniors group, and my brother and sister encouraged me to come along. John and Jill were also coverly sneaking a few youth group members to the Pentecostal Church in Ilford for their evening service. This was quite a revelation to me, because it seemed these people actually believed what they said, and lived it. I kept going, enjoying the lovely harmonic singing, interested in the sermons Barry Gillick(?) preached (because he was funny as well as authoritative). The only real mistake they made was trying to get everyone to speak in tongues, instead of concentrating on the Spirit giving gifts. The upshot is that I find myself unable to be sure I'm not simply making it up: when tongues are supposed to be a source of inspiration, I find doubt.

A story from University: a friend, Christian Selveratnum, was the verger as Holy Trinity, Coventry, and he was praying for the youth group, one by one (I think he had them lined up or something), asking that each receive the gift of tongues. Everyone received it except for this one guy, who Christian prayed for more and more. Eventually, he gave up, and explained how you can't tell why God does or doesn't give his gifts, and not to feel disheartened. The youth nodded, understanding, and then said `It's funny though.. I knew you were speaking a foreign language, but I could understand every word.' (Having received the gift of interpretation.)

One of the reasons I did so poorly at school was because I simply failed to keep track of my homework. This was particularly irritating to me with Physics, since I could usually do maths homework on the bus or before the lesson in break. I think the final time I forgot my physics homework, Mr Franklin, a mildly eccentric Physics teacher, actually head of the department, who'd given me such a good telling-off about it last time that I'd actually started using a small notebook to write the homework assignments down, properly; Mr Franklin simply denied that I'd forgotten it, and didn't make any mention that I hadn't handed my book in. I felt awful, because I genuinely hadn't wanted to forget, and I was dreading his explosion. When it didn't come, I was (of course) immensely relieved, and I actually didn't forget after that.

It was also Mr Franklin who I tried to get an A-level textbook from, because I'd read the O-level textbook and understood it all. I think this was prior to the incident mentioned above, so he refused me on the grounds of incomplete or missing homework.

I also recall Mr Hagedorn, my A-level applied maths teacher taking me out of the class, and telling me I was wasting my talent by not applying myself. This was particularly hard, because I'd been looking up to him as some sort of father figure (as his son tried to point out as an attack a few months earlier, something he apologied for when he later learned about my father's death).

So I made it through Bancroft's. Looking back, I can't quite work out why they didn't kick me out after the first few years of bad grades, but perhaps the bursary system doesn't work like that. I suppose my having passed several O and A levels, and having made it through University has vindicated the choice to an extent.

I managed to achieve ABC at A level, sufficient to fulfil the points requirement for me to go to Warwick University, to study Computer Science.

I'm still unsure whether I'm living up to the potential that so many of my teachers apparently saw in me. I know I seem to lack the sort of drive to pursue my hobbies in earnest, although those things which involve relying or being relied upon by other people seem to work out.

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