While all this magic was happening in the acting part of my school-life, another avenue for self expression was opening up for me outside of the sporting arena. Around the age of twelve, I had developed a liking for beating the skins. This was not some sort of euphemism for altogether more hormonal habits likely to affect my sight and/or growth, but the art of percussion, playing the drums. Don't get me wrong, I was quite a fan of the first one, but drumming got me out of the house far more.
I had been bought a drum kit for my fourth or maybe fifth Christmas by my parents from a huge department store in Birmingham - Rackhams, probably - and I still vividly recall being taken to see it there before they actually bought it. It was fantastic! It had tom-toms, bass-drum pedal, Hi-Hat, the lot! The only problem was that the skins were made of cardboard so most of the time I owned it, it was buggered. Still, I loved it and, a few years later got my hands on the real thing, a Maxwin drum kit by Pearl in shimmery silver.
(Drumming strangely has the same qualities as squash, in that you are completely in charge of events and develop fore-arms the size of lamb shanks).
I'd started in a rather classical vein. I had lessons from the theatre's percussionist complete with exercises and home-work, frighteningly similar to the piano lessons I'd been forced to endure at home for years. I can't remember the name of my old piano teacher but she would visit me once a week and leave my room smelling like a brimming ash-tray.. I don't even think she actually smoked while she was there...the sheer volume of tabs she'd got though before arriving ensured my room would need its door open for days afterwards. I'm surprised I'm not riddled with lung disease through simply sitting next to her for that hour, once a week. Unfortunately, not surprisingly I suppose, she didn't make the millenium celebrations. I'm pretty sure she didn't even make it through Maggie's third term. Although, maybe I am making huge assumptions here as I remember she was also so myopic, the music would have to be taken off the piano and rested, literally, on the end of her nose for her to read it, so any high edge would have been a disaster waiting to happen...
Anyway, the reason most kids want to play the drums is because they want to bash seven types of shite out of them and, in the process, deafen anyone within a mile radius. Exercises and paradiddles on a drum skin stretched to the point of snapping wasn't really lighting my fire. I persevered, though, and, more than that, persuaded pater that a drum-kit in our living room was essential to my progress to the Royal Philharmonic.
So it was that I was able to smack away to my heart's - if not Noise Abatement Society's - content every afternoon after school. It has to be said that father's decision probably didn't impinge much on his auditory life as, most afternoons and evenings he would be well out of the decibel firing line, ensuring the punters at the Royal Shakespeare had a set to look at each evening.
The first public airing of my drumming skills, if you discount the fact that three streets could hear me whenever I practised, was when I joined the Stratford Wind Band Association. Here I could put my lessons to good use and even meet a few girls. You would have thought being fifteen in the company of fourteen year old girls who spent their evenings in a wind band would be a good move However, all the puffing and blowing conspired to make them look more Dizzy Gillespie than anything else and I made a quick decision to concentrate on the job in hand.
Speaking of which, for some reason, a reason that escapes me to this day, it was during this time I decided to completely shave off my recently acquired pubic hair. I'm sure there may be some deeply Freudian explanation to this, but I only mention it because it is one of the most vivid memories I have of this whole Wind Band period! Not because it signified any life-defining moment, but because I still wince when I remember the almost unbearable itching I had to endure for weeks afterwards.
Anyway, I digress. I'm sure that taking a Bic to myself didn't bring me any nearer to sporting nirvana than any of these artistic diversions, but, let me just warn anyone out there who has ever sat in the bath and caught sight of that Gillette lying by the hot tap to think long and hard before doing anything you may regret...
The percussion section consisted of three people. Myself, my best mate Dave, and some other guy who wouldn't ever let us near the timpani. We did a few concerts in the area and got to know the repertoire quite well. The theme from Star Trek was always a crowd pleaser and there was a Glen Miller number with a simple but never-the-less solo snare-drum break. The pulse would quicken as the bars counted down to this moment of glory. The music would whirl up towards this break and stop abruptly leaving the guy with the sticks to do his seven or eight seconds of stuff on the solitary drum. Dave and I had a system where we would share the glory and each have a go at alternate concerts.
Throughout all this, I would spend hours at home on my own drum-"kit" with a pair of head-phones, thumping away to "Blinded by the Light", "Dancing in the City" or "Walking on the Moon", oblivious to the cacophony of unrelated bangs and crashes anyone outside of the head-set actually heard. Within, I was Stuart Copeland, my contribution seamlessly mixed with Andy and Sting. Without, I was a just another cliche of an adolescent, repetitively, annoyingly, tune-lessly, loudly hitting a drum-kit for as long as anyone allowed me to.
Looking back, I cannot for the life of me understand how I was indulged to such an extent in such a patently anti-social hobby. Maybe it was thought the drumming thing was another valuable tool of self-expression to be encouraged along with reading poetry or collecting stamps. Maybe, I was already thought to be a lost cause and the drums were a last attempt to find something that interested me seeing as almost everything else, apart from holding my breath underwater for long periods, left me cold.
Drumming wasn't the only musical avenue I had been down. As I said, my lungs were given a beagling once a week from the piano tutor and I had been an active member of the school choir. I say 'active', although things had taken a different turn in the vocal stakes lately. Sure, I was in the choir. But I had to mime. I think this was because the music master hadn't enough tenors and, even though I had had the dubious distinction of being the last boy of the class in the trebles, this didn't necessarily mean my voice would err on the high side for evermore. In fact, I was convinced I was a bass and told him so. Dave was a bass. I wanted to be one too! Sort of redress the trebly balance. But he wouldn't listen. So the solution was to have me in the choir but not sing! I'd always loved singing. I would spend hours in the bathroom as a child revelling in the acoustic. I would sing the top 40 with abandon as it floated up from downstairs on a Sunday. I sang with the talented boys who were appearing in the plays at the theatre and sang better and clearer than they did. I sang all the time. Oh, yes. I loved singing. Then, the balls dropped and joyous, care-free singing became a thing of the past. Maybe this would explain the episode with the Wilkinson Sword, my sub-conscious' misguided attempt to regain its voice and its freedom. Maybe I just fancied shaving my pubes off.
But what I'd lost in the soaring stakes, I'd definitely gained in the gravelly ones. More Lee Marvin than Donny now, and I felt that the corresponding gravitas merited a place with the big-balled boys down the far end of the chapel. But, no, as I said, the musical human-resource solution was for me to join the half-breeds, the lady-boys, the nearly-men in the tenor section. To pour salt on the testicular wound, Dave was also chosen by the music teacher to play the Timpani in the school concert - the older guy who jealously guarded his kettles in the wind band wasn't at our school and so couldn't apply his timpanic veto - and I spent the evening sitting next to him pinging a triangle every so often. I can't think of a clearer image to demonstrate my emasculation than that. But I'm not bitter...much. And, anyway, I was to have my moments of musical glory later on...