G*Nice: Rock star moves

I touched on this earlier once but really this question requires greater attention. At 13 it wasn't so much what I knew I wanted for myself for the future. It was more about knowing what I didn't want. This may not be the most positive message to put out there for my young readers who are maybe looking for direction or inspiration, but with the lack of a burning ambition at least I was able to move forward by the process of elimination.

As I have expressed before, I really felt constrained by my family life - the normalness of everything was so claustrophobic. As many kids do, I escaped through my imagination and passions. Music was the one thing that transported me to other places that just felt more glamorous, dangerous and exciting. It really provided the medicine to the crushing boredom of school and family life. I am aware that I am talking about my family life as if it were horrendous, which would be doing a great disservice to my parents. It really wasn't that bad; it was just really ordinary because my folks are just simple, very hard-working people whose main focus was to earn money from very tough jobs to bring up three kids.

It took me some time to mature to appreciate what my parents achieved and sacrificed for the family, and I realise now that my reaction as a teenager was more against the circumstances than against them and the values they believed to be important. I was a huge fan of David Bowie, who not only sang about space ships and space oddities, but invented alto-egos and exotic characters to add an extra visual dimension to his musical concoctions.

It was just the escape that I needed to take myself from the mainstream into the fringes as an individual, so that I could merge my fantasy life and imagination into my everyday reality. My personal revolution started modestly: scrawling subversive messages all over my school bag (what a rebel, huh!) then moving onto customising my school uniform. As I became more adventurous and rebellious, the customisation moved to my hairstyle. Much to the annoyance and total bewilderment of my folks, I just kept growing it while resisting every threat of a haircut like it was an infringement of my human rights.

To add fuel to the fire, I started to add colour in the style of my hero. With female friends who were aspiring hair stylists, I became a laboratory rat testing out various blends of bleach and red colouring to achieve the David Bowie look that I so admired. I can't say that every attempt was successful and there were times when I looked a bit like a traffic light, but it gave me an air of the unexpected and the unusual that I craved.

It also raises one's profile above the sea of conventionality that most of suburban London is flooded by, which draws you to the attention of every tough kid and rowdy group that you come across. The best that can be said about all of it was that it could be termed character building. As I analyse it now maybe it's part of the reason why I am so thick-skinned.

In terms of what I dreamed of, it would have been to have a life of fun and happiness where at least there were constant sparks and the feeling of living like a rock star. And you know, in my own way I think I have mostly achieved it. All by default rather than design.

Boys-Keep-Swing-ingly yours