10 Life Lessons. Number 1.

I’ve been on this earth for 66 years, and I can honestly say that I remember 62 of them. The first four are a blur, I think I can remember before I was 4 years of age, but to be honest, I think they might be memories from old photographs. For example, I can remember a tree, a big fruit tree at the bottom of the garden and being held underneath it by Mum. But… there's a photograph of Dad and Mum holding me as a baby underneath a tree at our first house in Shaftsbury Avenue. So maybe it’s not a memory, just a photograph that I’ve seen, stored inside my head, then recalled it back as something else.

We lived in a two-up two-down terraced house in East London. Our house faced the school gates where I was to go when I was five. I remember looking out of our front room window and seeing the young kids in the playground. They were riding on pedal bikes and jumping through hoops. I wanted to go and join them, but Mum kept saying I had to wait till I was five. I knew I was only four, and five seemed a lifetime away. But five soon came.

I was a bright kid at five. I already knew my time's table. Ask me what six nines were and I’d tell you in a flash. Fifty-four. Dad had us learning our “times tables” as soon as we could listen and talk. But I don’t know how I learnt to read. I don’t remember Mum or Dad reading me bedtime stories and showing me the words, but somehow I remember looking at the newspaper one day and being able to read the headlines. By the time I started school, I’d already read Treasure Island. But there was one thing I couldn’t do at five. Tie my shoelaces!

I loved my Mum and Dad, but for some reason, I can’t explain, Dad was the one that I felt really close to. I loved him with every bone in my body, and the love only got stronger as I grew older. But back to the shoelaces.

Dad was working nights, so he was there when I got up for school one morning. It was half past eight and I was dressed and ready to go. The only thing left to do was to get Mum to tie up my laces. I told Mum I was ready and pointed to my shoes. Dad looked over. He spoke to Mum as if I wasn't there.

“What’s he want you to do?”

Mum casually explained that she was going to do up my laces. Dad’s face changed in an instant.

“He wants you to do what? Tie up his laces? Are you telling me that he can’t even tie up his shoes?”

I was five years of age, I could read, I could count up to over one hundred, I knew all of my times tables even the twelve ones. But his great disappointment in me was that I couldn’t do up my shoes.

He looked at me.

“Come here and put your foot on my knee.”

I did as I was told.

“Now watch carefully. It’s easy.”

He then wrapped one lace over the other and pulled, then he made a bow with one lace and circled it with the other, he slipped one lace through the other and pulled. My shoes were tied. Then he looked at me.

“I’m gonna do it again, then it’s your turn. Okay?”

I nodded.

In fact, he did it fourteen times before I got it right. Mum kept looking at him and looking at the clock.

“He’s gonna be late for school.”

He didn’t care. No son of his was going to school without knowing how to tie his laces.

It took me fifteen minutes, but once I had it, I had it.

As I left for school, he never said well done or good boy. He just looked at me and gave me the thumbs up. For me, that was worth a million hugs.

In those first few weeks at school, I also learnt to tell the time. It just made sense to me. So very quickly I became the popular boy in class, other kids would ask me “ How long before we go to the playground?” Or “ Do we go for lunch soon?” I’d look at the clock and give them the answer.

But the main reason I was most popular? Was because I could do up the other kid's shoes. The teacher loved it because it saved her time. There were thirty kids in our class and I was the only one who could tie shoelaces. So my job, after PE, while the teacher prepared for the next lesson was to help the other kids with their shoes.

LIFE LESSON NUMBER ONE. DAD KNOWS BEST.