I live close to one of the UK's leading theme parks. It's called Alton Towers and I've been there only once, on a sunny summer's day when I was 10. It wasn't a theme park then, though, but just a grand country house surrounded by gardens and parkland. I was thinking about it today for some reason and realised that it was the first notable expression of my loner gene.
I often played alone during the school holidays and so on, but this was different. This was an excursion organised by the cub scout troop to which I belonged. I knew all the other kids perfectly well and got on with them, but when they got off the bus I wandered away on my own. I spent much of the day sitting on a grassy bank with my mother-prepared provisions, watching the water fowl on the lake and the people passing by. And then I explored the parkland and gardens before returning to the bus at the appointed time. And I never did get to learn what the rest of the kids had been doing. I wasn't interested.
This is a picture of the very boy on the very day, and shows the point in my life when I was expanding into the role of school fat kid. It got worse before it got better at age 14, but by then I'd been marked to play in the front row of the rugby scrum and never managed to escape.
(I remember the day very well, surprisingly, and also feel a little sad when I see masses of traffic lined up nose to tail on the main road leading to Alton. Where there was once peaceful parkland and gardens, there now stands a forest of white knuckle rides making an awful lot of noise. And I expect the rank odour of mindless capitalism hangs like a leering ne'er-do-well in the once-pure air. But then I suppose it could be said that it has merely replaced the rank odour of class consciousness. So be it.)
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