Cliff McNish

According to my Mum, when I was arriving in this world on the night of 24th August 1962 the electricity in the house failed, and all the lights went out. So I was born part in darkness and part in candlelight. I’ve no idea what significance that has, but it sounds impressive somehow…I was born in Sunderland, a city in the north-east of England. I’d like to say I picked up the local Mackam accent, but unfortunately I only stayed long enough to toddle a few steps before my Dad whisked me, Mum and my older brother, Andy, down south.I don’t remember too much about my first 8 years of life. I think I just day-dreamed it away. One thing I do remember is that our family was always moving, so I had to get used to a new school and friends all the time. I got to dread that first day in a new class. When I was only six I distinctly remember being told off in my first week at yet another new school by a teacher. I had no idea what I’d done wrong, but the teacher shouted loudly and made me spend about 30 minutes standing on my chair in front of the whole class as punishment. That was the second most embarrassing moment in my life. The most embarrassing moment in my life occurred about a year earlier when, after repeatedly telling my teacher I had to go to the bathroom, and being told to wait and wait and wait, I … er, couldn’t wait a single moment longer.What was I like as a youngster? I don’t know – cheerful and a bit vacant probably sums it up quite well. We had a hawthorn wood at the back of my house, and I’d play there with my friends all day long whenever I had the chance. I always came home covered in scratches.My school reports were spectacularly average. My teachers were always noting that I ‘day-dreamed’ a lot. I didn’t read much either, and when I did it was comics – mainly Marvel superhero comics. There was one superhero named The Silver Surfer who went silently round the Universe on a kind of space-surf board. He was lonely, aloof, a genius.I identified with him.My first real book memory is being given C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew by my English teacher, Mrs Baldwin. Wherever you are now Mrs Baldwin, I thank you, because you opened my eyes. I was so bowled over by it that I read all the other 6 Narnian books right away. I loved them. Actually, I went further than love. I remember lying in bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling and wishing, wishing with all my heart, not just that I could meet C.S.Lewis (he was dead, actually), but that I could be C.S.Lewis. I wanted to BE C.S.Lewis! Don’t ask me what was going on in my head ...My Mum and Dad separated when I was eight years old, and my brothers, sister Caron and I moved several times again after this. Eventually we settled down in Luton in Bedfordshire.As I entered my teens I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had no ambition to write. When I was fourteen I briefly wanted to be a geomorphologist (someone who studies the landforms of the Earth), but only because I really liked my geography teacher, a brilliant Welshman called Gwyn Bennett. The last I heard he was still teaching, at the very same school in Luton I left 23 years ago. There’s a happy thought!With no better idea what to do with my life I just carried on at school, did my A-levels and went on to study History at York University. I left after 2 years, bored with the course and somewhat unhappy, without my degree and with a need to earn some money.My first job involved working in a warehouse, and I’m afraid my day-dreaming days returned. One of the jobs involved putting items into boxes and writing the customer addresses on them. Not too difficult, you might think, and you’d be right, but my attention strayed often and I kept putting the boxes in the wrong places or getting the addresses wrong. Luckily, I was moved into the accounts section of the company before they sacked me. I ended up doing some work on the office com