Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [7]
I loved that place.
The wind off the sea and the smell of salt water penetrated every corner of the house. The taps creaked when you turned them and the beds were so old and high that I could only reach into mine by climbing up the bedstead.
I remember the smell of the old Yamaha outboard engine in our ancient wooden boat that my father would carry down to the shore to take us out in on calm days. I remember walks through the woods with bluebells in full bloom. I especially loved hiding and running amongst the trees, getting my father to try and find me.
I remember being pushed by my elder sister, Lara, on a skateboard down the driveway and crashing into the fence; or lying in a bed beside Granny Patsie, both of us ill with measles, quarantined to the garden shed to keep us away from everyone else.
I remember swimming in the cold sea and eating boiled eggs every day for breakfast.
In essence, it was the place where I found my love of the sea and of the wild.
But I didn’t know it at the time.
Conversely, the school term times would be spent in London where my father worked as a politician. (It was a strange, or not so strange, irony that my mother married a future MP, after witnessing the dangerous power of politics first-hand growing up, with Patsie as her mother.)
When my parents married, Dad was working as a wine importer, having left the Royal Marine Commandos where he had served as an officer for three years. He then went on to run a small wine bar in London before finally seeking election as a local councillor and subsequently as a Member of Parliament for Chertsey, just south of London.
More importantly, my father was, above all, a good man: kind, gentle, fun, loyal and loved by many. But, growing up, I remember those times spent in London as quite lonely for me.
Dad was working very hard, and often late into the evenings, and Mum, as his assistant, worked beside him. I struggled, missing just having time together as a family – calm and unhurried.
Looking back, I craved some peaceful time with my parents. And it is probably why I behaved so badly at school.
I remember once biting a boy so hard that I drew blood, and then watching as the teachers rang my father to say they didn’t know what to do with me. My father said he knew what to do with me, though, and came down to the school at once.
With a chair placed in the middle of the gym, and all the children sitting cross-legged on the floor around him, he whacked me until my bum was black and blue.
The next day, I slipped my mother’s hand in a busy London street and ran away, only to be picked up by the police some hours later. I wanted attention, I guess.
My mother was forever having to lock me away in my bedroom for trouble-making, but she would then get concerned that I might run out of oxygen, so had a carpenter make some air-holes in the door.
They say that necessity is the mother of all invention, and I soon worked out that, with a bent-over coat hanger, I could undo the latch through the air-holes and escape. It was my first foray into the world of adapting and improvising, and those skills have served me well over the years.
At the same time, I was also developing a love of the physical. Mum would take me every week to a small gymnasium for budding gymnasts, run by the unforgettable Mr Sturgess.
The classes were held in a dusty old double garage behind a block of flats in Westminster.
Mr Sturgess ran the classes with iron, ex-military discipline. We each had ‘spots’ on the floor, denoting where we should stand rigidly to attention, awaiting our next task. And he pushed us hard. It felt like Mr Sturgess had forgotten that we were only aged six – but as kids, we loved it.
It made us feel special.
We would line up in rows beneath a metal bar, some seven feet off the ground, then one by one we would say: ‘Up, please, Mr Sturgess,’ and he