Imagine That: Other lives

Or I might have been deathly sick, or deformed. But none of these things happened, and I moved with my parents to the hills, and I went to a school far away from New Brighton. After that, I went to three more schools, and while I was at the last one, called high school, I was tempted by one of the boys to try drugs. Some of my friends were already starting into them, and they were already talking like their brains were falling to pieces. They didn't care about life, or death, or anything. Maybe that attitude came first but it found a friend in the drugs they were trying. I refused all drugs, including cigarettes - but I could have gone that way, and be brain-damaged today, or dying somewhere, of cancer.

I tried to learn the piano, the double bass, the violin, the recorder, and the guitar. I could have gone a long way but I had other plans. Where would I be today if I had followed music?

My grandfather encouraged me to run. He equalled Jack Lovelock's time for the mile, unofficially. Then he broke his hip and had a gold clip inserted. I tried running for many years, and did well with it. I trained up to one hundred miles a week, but I saw no future in it. I preferred to dream.

One day I was climbing a cliff. I reached a point where I could only go up. I was on the very edge. A slight mistake and I would be falling, and there was not much hope of surviving the drop. It was a long way down, and all rock. I lurched upwards, taking the gamble with my life, and grabbed a crumbling corner of rock, knowing I was only a breath away from eternity. That was another time when my life could have ended.

And I had two friends who died. They both had the same name. My name. Out of the three of us, why did those two die and this one live? I could have been one of those three. Why wasn't I?

There was a time at school when I was offered Greek, Latin and French. I wanted to do only Greek. The school said if I did Greek I had to also do French. It was either that or nothing. I called their bluff - tried to stare them out. I chose nothing. I could have been a Greek scholar now, translating old texts and writing books about them, but it didn't happen.

I was on holiday once, down by the sea. I followed the cliff, just above the water line at low tide. When the water came in again, I was nearly trapped. Did I die then? No, I made it back to the beach, cold, scared, thankful to be away from the jaws of the ocean.

Another day I slid to the back of a van and balanced on