A Potted Personal History (1990-present)

To return back to 1990, and during this period my mum started seeing a male nurse called Tony whom she had met at work, and he moved into the flat with us in Sutton. Tony took a new job working in Manchester, and they eventually moved in 1992 to the beautiful village of Edale at the start of the Pennine Way in the Peak District, midway between Sheffield and Manchester. I was invited to move with them if I wanted, but due to my work commitments and also the band that I was now in with Andrew and his two brothers, I declined the offer but in doing so obviously had to find alternative accommodation in the meantime. I soon found a house-share in Sutton, but was only there for a few months before I was forced to move out suddenly due to the owners’ family commitments.

I had now become firm friends with Andrew and his family, and had even been on holiday with them to the USA. On a couple of occasions we went to New Orleans to play in the French Quarter Jazz Festival, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will never forget. I spent a lot of time at their house, and it was at this point that his parents very kindly offered to put me up for a short period whilst I found alternative accommodation. After living with them for about 6 months, I found another house-share in Morden and subsequently moved once again. In 1993, Andrew and I decided to rent a flat together, as I was not particularly happy where I was living and Andrew desperately wanted to move out from his parent’s house (and I have a feeling that they were as desperate as he was). We found a suitable flat in nearby Mitcham, where we stayed for three years, and during this time we got on like a house on fire and never had a cross word. Or should that be ‘never did a crossword’? I think both are probably true.

It was whilst we’re living in Mitcham that I ‘came out’, and I couldn’t have had a better reaction from Andrew even if I’d been able to influence the outcome myself. He was initially a little nervous which was quite understandable, but he soon became more comfortable with the situation, which is not too surprising as he admitted to me that he had already guessed anyway! We only moved out of the flat due to Andrew’s financial difficulties which forced him to temporarily move back to live with his parents. I then moved to another house-share, this time in nearby Raynes Park to a house owned by a married couple who were friends of my sister and brother-in-law. Unfortunately their marriage was not a harmonious one, and they separated about a year later (I was now becoming worried that I was a bit of a jinx when it came to marriages!). Consequently, they put their house on the market and yet again I had to find somewhere else to live. At this point I decided that I’d had enough with renting and wanted somewhere of my own, and so after moving in temporarily with a friend for a few months, I bought a studio flat in Sutton and moved in on 16^th July 1997.

My Mum and Tony moved to France in 1995, again due to his work commitments, and they lived in various locations there until 2000 when they returned to the UK after yet another change of job for her new husband (they had married a few months before). They now live near Uttoxeter in Staffordshire, and my mum has just started nursing again, having been a ‘housewife’ for 6 years. My sister gave birth to her first child in 1990, and was married in 1997 to a policeman who happens to share our surname. I distinctly recall her as a teenager, dreamily practising her signature using the surname of whichever boyfriend she was with at the time, only to end up years later as Mrs Paula Cox! They had another child in July 2000, and their third child – yet another boy – was born in August 2002. They also live in Morden, just around the corner from where we lived 20-odd years ago with my mum and stepfather.

I lived in my flat in Sutton until February 2001 when I moved further out of London to a flat in Ashtead in Surrey, where I lived with my partner Martin for about 18 months. We moved again in September 2002 to a house next to Morden Park, which coincidentally is where Andrew and I had filmed some of our own amateur Doctor Who productions in 1989/90. So that’s a potted history of my life so far, or ‘the boring bit’, as you may like to refer to it.

Next Episode: Nostalgic Saturdays!