Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [8]
The rules were simple: you were not allowed to ask permission to drop off until the whole row was up and hanging, like dead pheasants in a game larder. And even then you had to request: ‘Down, please, Mr Sturgess.’ If you buckled and dropped off prematurely, you were sent back in shame to your spot.
I found I loved these sessions and took great pride in determining to be the last man hanging. Mum would say that she couldn’t bear to watch as my little skinny body hung there, my face purple and contorted in blind determination to stick it out until the bitter end.
One by one the other boys would drop off the bar, and I would be left hanging there, battling to endure until the point where even Mr Sturgess would decide it was time to call it.
I would then scuttle back to my mark, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Down, please, Mr Sturgess,’ became a family phrase for us, as an example of hard physical exercise, strict discipline and foolhardy determination. All of which would serve me well in later military days.
So my training was pretty well rounded. Climbing. Hanging. Escaping.
I loved them all.
Mum, still to this day, says that growing up I seemed destined to be a mix of Robin Hood, Harry Houdini, John the Baptist and an assassin.
I took it as a great compliment.
CHAPTER 7
My favourite times from that era were Tuesdays after school, when I would go to my Granny Patsie’s flat for tea, and to spend the night.
I remember the smell there as a mix of Silk Cut cigarettes and the baked beans and fish fingers she cooked me for tea. But I loved it. It was the only place away from home that I wasn’t ever homesick.
When my parents were away, I would often be sent to spend the night in the house of an older lady who I didn’t know, and who didn’t seem to know me, either. (I assume it was a friendly neighbour or acquaintance, or at least hope it was.)
I hated it.
I remember the smell of the old leather photo frame containing a picture of my mum and dad that I would cling to in the strange bed. I was too young to understand that my parents would be coming back soon.
But it taught me another big lesson: don’t leave your children if they don’t want you to.
Life, and their childhood, is so short and fragile.
Through all these times and formative young years, Lara, my sister, was a rock to me. My mother had suffered three miscarriages after having Lara, and eight years on she was convinced that she wasn’t going to be able to have more children. But Mum got pregnant, and she tells me she spent nine months in bed to make sure she didn’t miscarry.
It worked. Mum saved me.
The end result, though, was that she was probably pleased to get me out, and that Lara finally got herself a precious baby brother; or in effect, her own baby. So Lara ended up doing everything for me, and I adored her for it.
Whilst Mum was a busy ‘working’ mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate – from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed, and to brush my teeth.
In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself, or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes.
I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.
It is why we have always been so close. To her, I am still her little baby brother. And I love her for that. But, and this is the big but, growing up with Lara, there was never a moment’s peace. Even from day one, as a newborn babe in the hospital’s maternity ward, I was paraded around, shown off to anyone and everyone – I was my sister’s new ‘toy’. And it never stopped.
It makes me smile now, but I am sure it is why in later life that I craved the peace and solitude that