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where my ‘trouble’ started.
    Every kid is excited when their Nan comes to stay, and we were no exception, but the excitement was doubled because we were going on holiday with ours – yeah! We would collect Nan from the National Express coach station ready for our journey onwards to sunny Devon. She would get off the coach and reach into her bag.
    ‘Here you are, love. Here’s something for you.’
    It would be half a packet of Opal Fruits each – if we were lucky. Sometimes we didn’t get them at all, because if Nanny Tot ever saw a disabled person or someone with learning difficulties, she would put her hand in her bag and whip out our sweets. I remember once in a café Nan going to give a paraplegic my uneaten chips. And if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, Mum then told her off loudly, saying, ‘They want to be treated as equal. They’ve got rights now.’
    Nan’s generosity with our sweets to less able-bodied people had a sliding scale of its own – a brain tumour: a whole box of Rowntree’s pastilles; limb missing: Fry’s chocolatecream; retarded: Bounty; while a stutter would equate to two segments of a Terry’s chocolate orange.
    Sadly, Nan’s tightness actually affected her hearing.
    ‘Can I have 50p to have a ride on the donkeys?’ I begged.
    She smiled sweetly and carried on with her crossword.
    ‘Please, Nan!’
    It was no good. She couldn’t hear a thing. If Dad was buying us a fish and chip supper, though, her hearing would become so acute she would have put a bat to shame.
    Despite the penny pinching, we did have a lovely time together. Mum and Dad would hit the campsite club and me, Nan and Gary would all sit and try and listen to the television over the noise of the rain pelting down the corrugated-iron roof.
    If you were in an even-numbered caravan you were a royal and if you were in an odd-numbered caravan you were a rebel. Whenever you walked around the campsite and came across a redcoat he’d ask, ‘What are you?’
    ‘Rebel!’ we’d all shout the first year, because we were in caravan 181.
    The next year we found ourselves royals. ‘What are you?’
    ‘Royal!’
    Honestly, who needs Disneyland when you can have this much fun?
    Those holidays in Devon and eventually Cornwall were so idyllic. The sun always seemed to be shining and there was a lovely sense of peace about the place. Gary was getting older and becoming more fun and we were able to do things together.
    For all the picture-perfect innocence, it soon became clear that something ominous was shifting inside me, as I discovered one afternoon whilst walking along the beach with my parents.
    ‘Alan! Stop that. Stop doing that!’ shouted my mother, pointing at me.
    ‘What?’
    I was subconsciously mincing along with my bucket in the crook of my arm like a handbag and twirling the spade around my fingers like a majorette.
    ‘Hold it properly!’ she insisted.
    I personally thought I looked fabulous but I relented and held it ‘properly’. Boring!
    I often wonder whether my parents took it as an omen or whether it even registered, but looking back now I realise it was the thin end of the wedge.
    The only argument I remember between my parents took place on holiday, though. It was quite serious. Dad had used Mum’s really expensive shampoo and she was horrified.
    ‘It’s a waste on your head,’ she retorted. ‘You’re bloody bald!’
    It seems it was all right for Mohammed Ali to take the piss out of my father’s lack of hair, but not my mother. He opened the caravan door and flung Mum’s shampoo out so far that it cleared the enormous conifers adjacent to our caravan.
    Mum cried out, ‘Alan! Alan! Go and find my shampoo!’
    Like a sniffer dog I was released onto the campsite in my pyjamas and slippers, searching for this bloody shampoo. I eventually found it outside the camp shop. It was lying in the carpark next to two pensioners staring up at the sky, hoping that God would deliver them some expensive hair