John Bishop - How Did All This Happen?

Kieran and I became good friends, mainly because we were the only ones in there for more than a few days and because we were very close in age. I would read comics with him or just talk, or show him things. Gradually his winks were accompanied by grunts, and it was clear he was on his way back from the damage that had been caused when he had been knocked over by a van whilst out playing.

When I left hospital I was genuinely sad to be saying goodbye to Kieran. We kept in touch and, during my frequent visits to the hospital, I called in to see him on the ward and later at his house, when he had been deemed well enough to be transferred home, near Warrington. When my hospital visits ended and I had no reason to visit Warrington, our communication reduced to the odd letter or card, and a very occasional phone call, although his speech still had some way to go to be fully comprehensible and his handwriting looked like it had been a struggle to complete the words.

Then, one morning, when I was getting ready to go to school, my dad opened a letter over breakfast. I recognised the handwriting as belonging to Kieran’s mum. I could see from his expression that my dad had a message to pass on. He handed me the letter. Kieran had died. Despite his improvement he hadn’t been strong enough to ward off normal infections and had lost his fight for life.

Kieran had died as a consequence of an accident that could have been avoided. As always with these happenings that can ruin lives, there would have been many nights spent by all involved wishing that those split-second decisions that had put Kieran in front of that van had been different. Like my school friend in the swimming pool.

I was 17 and, once again, I was reminded that nothing in life is guaranteed.

CHAPTER 5 5. Teenage Kicks 6. All I Learnt in School 7. Newcastle 8. I Don’t Eat Meat, or Fight Paratroopers 9. Moving On 10. The Manchester Years 11. The Great U S of A 12. Football 13. Time to Grow Up 14. Learning to Ride 15. Road to Bangkok 16. Indian Days 17. A Day in Buxton Changed Everything 18. A Yank Called Joe 19. A Town That Didn’t Exist 20. Marriage, Fatherhood and Idiot Friends 21. Babies, a Surprise I Didn’t Want and the Snip 22. Bad Hair Day, Removal Vans and Broken Hearts 23. Frog and Bucket 24. Sometimes I Try to Be Funny 25. We All Have to Die on Our Arse Some Time 26. Life Saver 27. How a Wardrobe Can Change Your Life 28. ‘Mum, I’m on Telly!’ 29. Festival of Broken Dreams 30. We Are the Champions! 31. On Tour 32. It’s Always Better When It’s Full 33. Opportunity Knocks 34. 2010 … No Going Back 35. Sport Relief 36. A Family Day at Wembley 37. Week of Hell Picture Section Postscript About the Publisher

TEENAGE KICKS 5. Teenage Kicks 6. All I Learnt in School 7. Newcastle 8. I Don’t Eat Meat, or Fight Paratroopers 9. Moving On 10. The Manchester Years 11. The Great U S of A 12. Football 13. Time to Grow Up 14. Learning to Ride 15. Road to Bangkok 16. Indian Days 17. A Day in Buxton Changed Everything 18. A Yank Called Joe 19. A Town That Didn’t Exist 20. Marriage, Fatherhood and Idiot Friends 21. Babies, a Surprise I Didn’t Want and the Snip 22. Bad Hair Day, Removal Vans and Broken Hearts 23. Frog and Bucket 24. Sometimes I Try to Be Funny 25. We All Have to Die on Our Arse Some Time 26. Life Saver 27. How a Wardrobe Can Change Your Life 28. ‘Mum, I’m on Telly!’ 29. Festival of Broken Dreams 30. We Are the Champions! 31. On Tour 32. It’s Always Better When It’s Full 33. Opportunity Knocks 34. 2010 … No Going Back 35. Sport Relief 36. A Family Day at Wembley 37. Week of Hell Picture Section Postscript About the Publisher

I have teenage boys now. I look at their life and not only do I not understand them because they are teenagers and their job is to be incomprehensible to their parents, but also because their life is nothing like the life I had at their age. When I was a teenager, we did not have any form of communication apart from talking either face-to-face, being on the house phone or writing. Admittedly, the letter-writing side was in reality limited to notes around the classroom, usually involving a very poor caricature of the teacher with enormous genitals. Which now seems rather odd. Why would it be funny to suggest the man in front of you had a huge cock? But, for some reason in a world before YouTube, it was the funniest thing we could think of.

Valentine’s Day cards were the only other time I recall writing to communicate. They were things to be prized, and size certainly mattered. During my teenage years I would give my girlfriend a Valentine’s card that was the size of a Wendy house, or padded so it was like a duvet in a box, although admittedly a duvet with a doe-eyed teddy bear on it. I wouldn’t for a minute suggest that I was in any way more romantic than any other teenage boy, but from an early age I learnt that you have to invest if you want something, and an impressive card, in my mind, stood you in good stead for a fondle.

I sometimes miss the simplicity of teenage relationships, though – the ability to end it by telling your mate to tell her mate that she was ‘chucked’ just seems so much more honest in its own cowardly way than the text/Facebook route chosen by teenagers today. I also miss the progressive nature of the physical relationship. The gradual stages of fumbling and endless snogging to suddenly being allowed entry into unchartered waters so that you take another tiny step towards manhood – all of that held an excitement that is hard to replicate at any other stage of your life. A mate of mine said to me that reducing his golf handicap was giving him the same buzz that he received from achieving the gradual progression through the bases when he was a teenage boy. There is nothing that can define you more as a middle-aged man than having a friend who is as excited by lowering his golf handicap as he once was by learning how to undo a bra. Age is a cruel thing.

Today, the first indication that your teenage child is having a relationship is the increasing size of their mobile phone bill. The notion that teenage romance led to hours on the phone was somewhat alien in my youth: talking on the house phone at all was a rare event. The phone was for emergencies. Besides, the phone lived on a table positioned in the hallway under the stairs – the most public place in the house. Nowadays, people are suggesting that parents need to monitor their children’s activities on social networking sites to find out to whom they are talking. That wasn’t required in the eighties – if your mum wanted to know what you were up to, she just sat on the stairs.

Today, every individual in my house has their own mobile phone, and we have various telephone extensions around the house – to the extent that it is impossible not to be available for immediate communication. This has created a difficult situation for this generation of teenagers, as they have never known anything but instant communication. If the internet goes down in my house, it’s the end of the world, and the children immediately get in touch with social services to report neglect.

But the flip side to this is that if they leave the house and I want to know where they are going and what they are doing, I just ring them. (If you are a parent, you know that I’m lucky if they bother to answer the phone or tell me the truth, but allow me my fantasy.) Telecommunication has lost all its magic for them, which is sad in some ways. They will never know the excitement of a phone call after nine at night: anyone ringing our house that late was only doing it to say someone was dead, and it was always great family fun to guess who before the phone was picked up.

Often the quickest way to converse with teenagers today is via text, even if they are in the same room. I once had a text row with my son when we were sitting on the same couch! I lost, as every adult that tries to communicate with the ‘youth of today’ inevitably will do when the process of communication involves only using your thumbs. Watching my kids texting looks a blur to me: it’s like their two thumbs are having a race. Their head is bowed, and the concentration on the face and the general stillness could easily be interpreted as meditation, were it not for the frenetic thumb action. Having a text row with them is pointless because before you can finish your text to them they have replied, told you how wrong you are, how great everyone else’s parents are and how you are ruining their life.