Here's a 🧵, answering the same questions as the Guardian asked Andrew Ridgeley in an interview just before Christmas. To be tooted at a rate of one daily. This is not a guaranteed service level.
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When were you happiest?
When I was 15 or 16, living in Germany, having mostly left my childhood behind, possibilities stretching ahead, and not having taken on any responsibilities.
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In my Mum's arms aged about three, being lifted up to see a green Wessex helicopter using the field behind our house in Taunton.
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Andrew Ridgeley replied "a pension" which is probably the true answer. The children's accommodation costs at uni are going to come close. My friend Mike once joked that he was counting on having thick kids.
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@FourT4 Were you also a military brat by any chance?
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@mattb yes, dad was Army (RCT/RLC). Germany was our one overseas posting. So I had 4 years in Mönchengladbach and then JHQ Rheindahlen, albeit in a British bubble as far as school and friends went. How.about you?
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@FourT4 RAOC/RLC. 4 years at Wulfen, then 2 in Fallingbostel.
I know what you mean about the British bubble. It was less marked in Wulfen, though, as we didn't live on base. The downside of that was having to search the car before touching it EVERY TIME it left your sight. I was 10 when I was taught to use the under car mirror and what to look for ☹️
Loved Germany, though. Been back many times since. Still do.
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@mattb we had a house off base too, in MG. Then we moved into the JHQ bubble in 1989. I think I heard the bang when the bomb went off in Rheindahlen, although I was in bed several miles away. And we were deeply involved with the sailing and windsurfing club in Roermond, where the IRA ASU was arrested.
I remember cycling to Bruggen & Wildenrath to watch the Tornados and Phantoms take off from outside the base fence. Made a change from seeing them over the school.
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@FourT4 I imagine for many with settled backgrounds that age is it. A better sense of self, and a better view of a future. But both of those are gone and yet to come, for a while there's a moment without pressure. So it was for me.
Coincides with transition year in schools here
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@ronanmcd indeed - and as it happened I also moved schools, putting a lot of baggage behind me. And "settled backgrounds" gave me pause, as after a difficult year for the family, things were settling down. Age 13-14 was in that sense a fulcrum.
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@FourT4 yep, same. Family stuff at age 13 had largely resolved for me by then
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I keep thinking the first thing I'll grab is my wedding photos, since they were pre-digital, and not backed up,
but...
Consider my birth certificate, which shows that I was born in a prosperous country to a middle-earning stable parental setup in the second half of the 20th century. Compared to most of the last 50,000 years of humanity, I'm ridiculously lucky to have been born, and lived, here and now.
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Reserved. Callow. Selfabsorbed.
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Being trapped, in the sense of "Losing the opportunity to have opportunities." For example, pandemic travel bans, living in Europe after Brexit.
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A sense of community and shared responsibility.
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A better question would be "who would you like to direct the film of your life?" to which I'd answer Hayao Miyazaki. The notion of a film of my life is entertaining; I mean, what if I didn't have control of the edit? I'm not really much good at casting, but I do remember being compared to Rowan Atkinson once. Sorry, Rowan.
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Probably biting my nails, which has been with me since I stopped sucking my thumb. At the moment we're on a break, with additional help from a pot of clear nail varnish, but I've gone from biting the nails to scraping off the varnish. And as they get longer, flicking the corners of the nails is immensely difficult to stop. I sometimes wonder if it's worth trying hypnotism, but I don't think I'm suggestible in that way.
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Loss of physical capability, specifically, something secret that I've been mostly on top of since I was a teenager, which makes day to day life "normal". When that goes, it'll be a significant change. I'm not talking about a superpower, it's something you can all do that I can't, without drugs and fitness.
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In this respect I have no shame. Arrogance, maybe. If a book's dull or impenetrable, it's not worth my time.
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My career choices started in the 1980s recession, so I wanted to be something someone would always need so that I "couldn't" be made redundant. Herriot suggested I should be a 1950s vet, but when I changed schools, I couldn't choose all 3 sciences at GCSE, and I dropped biology. They offered to help me with extra classes at lunchtime, but I didn't follow it up. With hindsight I'm not sure I'd have coped with being a small-animal vet.
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Anonymity, every time. I would really struggle with the expectation to act in my public persona on cue. It's difficult enough in my professional life.
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It's difficult to pick on one specific thing. They've always been generous, and with the things I need rather than want. Except for offering to take the children from time to time as they got older. But I'm not carping.
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To the consultant at Great Ormond St who, when they released me aged 18, I didn't thank properly for looking after me. I did write shortly afterwards, but I was callow.
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That has to be the second Mrs Roach, who repaid my trust when I was feeling very bruised, and since then has continued to astonish me. She'd say that I should answer "his bike" or more recently "trains". She'd be wrong.
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If we're asking about romantic love. If it's reciprocated, like being the luckiest person in the world, that there's someone who "gets you", that you don't have to travel through life alone. Although the older I get, the more I'm prepared to deal with that. People manage it all the time.
If it's not reciprocated, it feels like a hamster wheel of angst.
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There are a lot of famous people I expect I would detest, but I haven't met them, so this is unfair. I can't choose Osama bin Laden, but I can choose George W. Bush for missing the opportunity to not retaliate. That set the scene for the 2000s and the sub-prime crisis, which has reverberated into now. Of the people I've met, all the ones who've been promoted according to the Peter Principle and don't have the courage to admit it.
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"Pardon?" I can't have conversations in my deaf-ear side, nor in noisy restaurants, nor (most recently) on a social bike ride where I tried to hold up my end of a 20-minute "how are you" conversation with the person next to me by listening to their flow and tone, and very occasionally, a snatch of sentence. Thankfully they were happy to chatter away.
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My first reaction would be that I wouldn't have married the first Mrs Roach.
But how, at the time, could I realise I should break with someone that, in some ways I'd grown up with? Then, it seemed like a positive step. As the marriage ended, in an act of self protection, I stopped asking "where did it go wrong?" and, partly through the blessing of being childless, cut off contact.
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20 cont'd.
I've ended up not knowing how much of that marriage was a happy memory I can trust, and how much was built on a lie. Consequently I've cauterised all memories of my twenties, which should have been formative in some way, but is a dark morass I don't want to examine. The thing is, if I didn't do all that, would I have been the right person for the second Mrs Roach at the right time in her life? My life with her has been a worthwhile bargain in exchange for my twenties.
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@FourT4 I have been thoroughly researching Jon Roach for at least three and a half minutes, and the answer to Question 7 fits well with my new mental model of Jon Roach. In comparison, the answer to Question 5 seems incorrect.
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@peterwyrm supplementary answers to q5: inconsistent and lacking self knowledge.
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