I had a miserable childhood.
Don’t get me wrong: I was blessed with great parents who gave me very strong foundations. But beyond that, I got a fairly tough deal.
Each and every school I went to sucked. Sucked with a capital S.
Strange really because they were all private schools; or as we say in England (in a typically counter-intuitive, oxymoronic kind of a way), public schools. The schools that parents have to pay a lot of money to send their kids to.
So I supposedly had one of the best educations that money can buy! Sure didn’t feel like it though… and I suspect that education is not something that can, or should be, bought…
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When I was six, we lived in Israel for a year. I didn’t speak a word of Hebrew when we first got there, and I didn’t know a soul, but the ‘teacher’ made me stand facing into the corner at the front of the classroom, all the Israeli kids behind me sniggering at the pale, dumb kid who even the teacher didn’t like.
My mother had to pick me up from hospital one day – I’d had my head cracked open by a rock-wielding Israelite. I must admit, I may have thrown the first stone. But his was a lot bigger…