G*Nice: So much to be grateful for

For those who missed last week's article, I am on a roll about the influence our childhood homes have in forming our personalities in later life. I am now picking the story up with family home number two, where I lived from the age of six, and it's still my parents' house to this day.

I don't know how my folks managed to move to this neighbourhood because it was decidedly posh compared to the previous, but now I understand it was through hard work and self-sacrifice on their part. As a kid it was good for me in one way because I didn't get into so many fights with the locals as I did before. But the down side was that I couldn't comprehend how my new friends and their family life was so different to mine. Their dads all had new cars and went to work in clean clothes and returned later looking exactly the same, while their mums were all housewives who spent most of their time lunching and getting their hair done. My dad had cars that were older than the bricks in our house, while my mum would go to her part-time jobs on a pushbike.

I am ashamed to say now as an adult that I was so embarrassed by this difference in circumstance, that I would pretend to not notice my folks returning home if I was hanging in the street playing ball! It's amazing to think that I was feeling this peer-pressure at such a young age.

I can only imagine the pressure that exists for the kids today where the media is pushing so many aspirational lifestyles at them.

I mentioned before how music and pop culture was my escape, fuelling my dreams for a life full of frivolity and danger. I wanted to be James Bond, David Bowie, Luke Skywalker, not just the boy next door. The only way I could see this happening was to boost my meagre pocket money with increased income by working on milk floats and delivering papers. With more spending power I could convince my mum to buy me some of the clothes that at the time I wanted like my life depended on it. When I got my first pair of Adidas shell-toes I thought I was The Man… Mr Superfly. They somehow elevated my walk much more than the supermarket specials that I was afforded previously.

One of the impressions from those days is that the family seemed to have a strict dinner regime. Mondays and Tuesdays were the worst, usually delivering up a soup with potatoes and boiled meat one day, with liver and gravy the next. Now I understand that it was about providing healthy food on a limited budget but at the time it just seemed like torture because young G was not allowed to leave the table until all was eaten. I would sit there for hours pushing stuff around the plate or crushing the offending particles to pulp rather than eating them!

As bleak a picture that I paint, I am eternally grateful for all that was provided for me, and I now celebrate every second that made me. As Kanye West so eloquently rapped it Everything I'm Not Made Me Everything I Am.

Coming-out-the-Other-Side-ingly yours
G*Nice