How Did We Get Here?

The other day, my Son said to me, "How did we get here, Dad?"

I said, "How do you mean, Son?"

He gestured at the rolling hills and glacial lakes that make up our view from the veranda.  The deer grazing at the fringes of the ones of the many wooded glades that pepper the vast estate.

I took a soothing sip of my Martini, watched as the olive bobbed briefly beneath its surface, its sleek head like that of an otter, diving for salmon.  Then I turned to him and said, "We broke in through the kitchen window, Son, don't you remember?  Now fill the bag and let's get out of here."

But seriously, folks...I'm sure I can't be the only person who's looked back on their life and marvelled at how far they've come.  You're never really aware, at the time, that you're experiencing life-changing events; you don't stand outside yourself and look at what you're doing and say "My, what a life-changing event that's happening here."  You just do it and move on.

In my short but colourful life, I do sometimes cast a reflective eye over the last few decades and think "Wow, did I really do all that?"  And yet there is still so much further to go.

I am a child of the seventies.  My parents moved from Liverpool in 1969 to a town across the river called Birkenhead, often referred to by Liverpudlians as "the one-eyed city" (so called because Birkenhead has always got one eye on what Liverpool is doing).  My mum was a house-maker and my dad was an electrical engineer.

Back then - unlike now - there was no real notion of leaving school and starting a career in showbiz.  Rather, the idea seemed to be to find the most mundane job one could find and then do it until you retired.  But my interests did not lie in that direction.

I wanted to be a writer!

I distinctly remember the Art teacher, Mr Bell, asking a group of us in secondary school what career we wanted to pursue.  Eagerly I awaited my turn as I heard the other kids trot out the usual choices of train driver, hairdresser and fireman.  I knew Mr Bell was going to be impressed by my choice - he was the Art teacher, after all; how could he not approve?

"Stefan, how about you?"

"I want to be a writer, Sir."

"A writer?!  You'll starve!"

And that was the end of that.  My dreams crushed with a single sentence.  I was bereft.  Devastated.  A shadow of my former self.

So I trod water for the next few years.  School ended and I followed the pack and went to sixth form college - anything to avoid getting a job, really.  I soon learned that kids went to sixth form because they wanted to go on to university.  Well, there was no way that my parents were going to fund me through three years of that - not that I was bright enough to go to university in the first place - so, for me, college was a total waste of time.

There can't be many periods in life that can be written off as a waste of time.  But had I not gone to college, I would have missed nothing.  My life would have been completely unchanged.  I didn't even get laid while I was at college.

The first significant event that happened in my life - to my way of thinking - occurred in 1994 when, whilst working for a local newspaper, I interviewed the band Mixie's Men in a pub in Birkenhead.  After the interview had finished, with the booze still in full flow, I mentioned to the boys that I did a very good impression of Billy Connolly but didn't know what to do with it.  After hearing the impersonation, and agreeing that is was indeed very good, they offered me the role of unofficial support act to the group.  They couldn't pay me, but there were fringe benefits to working with the band - Ian Drury was right when he sang "Sex and drugs and rock and roll are very good indeed".

Over the next twelve months, I gigged off-and-on with Mixie's Men until the drummer not unkindly suggested that I "Go West, young man" and find my own audience.  Which I did.

I eventually hung up my comedy hat in 1999, by which point I'd had enough of the stand-up scene and a new ambition burned within me.

I wanted to be a singer!

This was not the first time I wanted to get up on stage and have a warble, but Mrs Randles the Music teacher at my primary school had told me in no uncertain terms that I could not sing.  So that was the end of that.  It was only when listening to a Frank Sinatra record that I'd bought my dad in 1997 that I found that I sounded pretty good when I sang along to the tunes.  Turned out I had a decent timbre for that kind of music.  So, fuck you Mrs Randles, wherever you are.

I was already involved in music by this point, having joined a band in when still in secondary school.  But at the time, they didn't want to play gigs whereas I, being something of a show-off, most definitely did.

That said, it took a while to get my singing career underway.  There was the small matter of falling in love, getting married and having children to attend to.  But in 2007, once the bedrock of my life was established, I went back out onto the road.  And, give or take the odd pandemic, I've been there ever since.

And now I am complete.