I started writing my first book when I was six or seven years old. It was a rainy day at school and we weren’t allowed to go out and play, so we just had to stay inside and we were supplied with paper to draw on. But instead of drawing, I picked up a turquoise felt tip pen, folded the sheet of paper over, and started writing. The story, I remember, involved a dog called Rover, who may or may not have been a secret agent, and soon I’d add a new chapter every time that it rained. It must have rained a lot that year. In fact, I’d be so happy on the way to school when it was raining because I knew that I’d be able to sit down and work on another chapter of Rover’s amazing adventure.
It must have been about 1980 or 1981. Our teacher was Mrs Markandiya, who spoke with a thick Indian accent and who I remember for her amazing saris, and the fact that one day she demonstrated to the class how to cook chapatis. Mrs Markandiya was probably safely ensconced in the teacher’s staff room during those heady rainy lunchtime writing sessions, so she probably never knew about this literary project, but I’d take each chapter home at the end of the day and add them to what was becoming a bulging manuscript, all written in turquoise felt tip.
The thing is, I cannot remember any of the stories, or even what happened to them, beyond the fact that the lead character was a dog and he was called Rover. The novel went with two names: I drew a front cover, which was basically just a giant letter R, which stood for both Rover and also for Robert, because I was a clever kid and I had quickly sussed that names can start with the same letters. So the book was sometimes called R, but then I’d come up with a much more exciting name.
The Bible 2.
Okay, so I was only six or seven, but the school was Church of England and every day started with assembly and a reading or two from the Bible. I would listen to these stories and I’d see them just as that, stories, very much like the stories in R, and seemingly, just as well-written. So why couldn’t my book be called The Bible 2? At the end of the year I moved from Mrs Markandiya’s class to that of Miss Russell, a rather lovely elderly lady who was in her last year of teaching. She was also deeply religious, and did not take too kindly to my book being called The Bible 2. I remember one day, I’d brought the manuscript to class and it had mysteriously gone missing, only for Miss Russell to equally mysteriously find it again. Looking back now, I do wonder if she was trying to teach me a lesson in order to save me from eternal damnation.
In 1982 I moved to middle school. This was another Church of England school, with the added benefit of being right nextdoor to the church itself. And by now my writing had developed to such an extent that I no longer wrote on scraps of paper in turquoise felt tip, but in proper exercise books using blue felt tips. The other big change was that Rover the dog was gone, replaced by a new lead character by the name of Cedric. Alas, Cedric was also a dog and a secret agent.
I had a thing about dogs and secret agents, it appears.
This new book had an actual title, ‘Bully Bulldog’s Ship’. I still have this hastily scrawled magnum opus and indeed, a friend of mine, the artist and poet Becky Nuttall, curated an exhibition of early works from local artists and poets at Torquay Library in 2017. She invited me to submit something, so I submitted the original Bully Bulldog’s Ship, and for a glorious couple of months it was on display behind a glass case in the middle of Torquay Library. The ten year old version of myself would have been immensely impressed.
‘Bully Bulldog’s Ship’ can be seen as a pivotal work in my career as a writer and performer, as my new teacher, Mr Shaw, let me read out a couple of pages of it a day to the rest of the class, who must have sat there and planned the exact method they’d use to flush my head down the loo once break time arrived. This was 1984, and in such a way I gave my first ever performance.
Robert Garnham 