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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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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A successful artist with something to say, like Ai Weiwei. I don't imagine his life is easy, but he seems to have the time and space to say what he needs to say, and he does it with elegance.
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Probably 2004. I concluded that if I didn't try to have children, my life would continue on a very predictable and meaningless course for, well, the rest of my life.
Edit: I just realised this could sound horribly sanctimonious about "life choices" and it's not meant as a judgement of anyone else's decisions, merely a statement of how I felt about it then.
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I have nearly 20 years' experience of making Dad jokes, and I will find humour in anything, however tenuous or inappropriate.
I wouldn't recommend my Bonnie Tyler satnav. It's a heartache. It keeps telling me to turn around, it got lost in France, and every now and then it falls apart.
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The wedding photography gig where the customer complained that they didn't like the photographs at all, and I still can't understand why. I had the last laugh, because the British Institute of Professional Photography accepted them as evidence of a suitably high standard of work to award me my first professional qualification. Not that I've brooded on it, down the years, you understand. ✌️
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We have children that don't get out much, and during the day, when, hypothetically, were I employed, I'd be supposed to be at work. Hypothetically, were I employed, I would be grateful if my employer had a flexible working policy.
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As an aside, those metaphors that use "aspiration" and "dream" interchangeably are codswallop. For example:
I fought a gun battle with terrorists, in a built-up area. I got out of the building I was in because it was being over-run, and walked down the street. I needed to reload my gun, so was feeding individual bullets in to the magazine, when I dropped one, which rolled into the ladies' toilets, and I had to go in and pick it up. Embarrassing.
At least it made a change from anxiety dreams about re-sitting maths exams.
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Although, last night's nightmare was REALLY stupid and annoying.
Mrs Roach and I applied for jobs at MI5.
Halfway through my interview we were both offered jobs and started work immediately on an investigation.
Loads of people were involved investigating and it was pointless to try and remember them all, except they were all on top of their work and looking to me to say something sensible, but it was my first day.
As the morning went on, the details of the case became more and more random (that's dreams for you) and I became less and less happy. I also realised that I already have a job, to which I would have to do some explaining.
At lunchtime, we got in the car to go to lunch together and I said "I'm going to spend the entire afternoon on the verge of tears. I don't like the job, I don't like travelling, and I hate being away from home!"
"Well," said Mrs Roach, "you've got a problem." And then I woke up.
And that's why you shouldn't have given me 1000 characters, @wild1145 !
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@FourT4 @wild1145 Flippin' 'eck!!
We've got more characters and your dream expected you to say something sensible 😉 😅
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@sharongascoigne @wild1145 I'm flattered that you read to the end ☺️
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