I’m not saying I peaked at two, but I certainly gave myself an uphill struggle. This jacket was from M&S, or St Michael to be precise. Bomber-style, it was white cotton with red, blue and yellow stripes. It was jolly and innocent in the way of a deckchair, and I appear to have worn it a lot in 1986 and 1987, with mustard dungarees, or shorts and T-shirts in clashing prints. On my feet, I am often pictured wearing scuffed white trainers or a pair of T-bar shoes that are still stashed away in an attic in Sheffield. They were my first proper pair of shoes and, as I would tell anyone who would listen, they were burgundy, not red.
I was too young then to be able to remember anything concrete from this period, and what I can recall is filtered through grainy family photo albums: vast, northern French skies and wide sandy beaches, jellies (the shoes) and Calippos. My dad’s BMW, the smell of his cigar smoke clinging to the leather seats and the packet of Soft Mints that was always in the glovebox. Crazy golf and grownups’ parties where women in mists of perfume laughed raucously about things I couldn’t understand.
