Tales of a Young John: #1 - The Recky (Part 1)

So this is to become a regular little feature on the blog, where I look back at my memories growing up, and try to figure out a bit more about WHY I am WHO I am today. Now that that's out of the way, let's get on with the first 'episode'.

#1: The Recky (Part One)

Growing up in Loughborough was alright as a kid. I mean, I lived there for most of my childhood, and the majority of my Mum's side of the family - my aunts, Uncle, Grandparents, cousins etc - all lived on either the same road, or within no more than five minutes walk of each other. This meant that growing up, I was never far from family, who became best friends over the years. It also meant there was very little reason not to knock about with someone on our local playground, which we called 'The Recky'.

So knock about we did; most days, in fact, and almost exclusively this took place on the recky. This was partly because it was a lot of fun; with it's big swings, roundabout and jungle gym; but mostly because, at six years old, I was the senior child in the family. Our parents had rules about how far we could go, and the recky - located at the back of a council estate-level cul de sac - was to us what Mordor was for the Shirefolk. Again, distance wasn't the only factor - in hindsight it was grotty. Really, really grotty.

And this is where I learned one of my first rude words (I mean, obviously, my first word was shit, and that was closely followed by fuck, but ythat's another story). Whilst playing a game one day, I found myself hiding under the jungle gym in one of it's many crawlspaces. These were heavily graffiti-ed with peoples names and numerous versions of "'insert name here' <3's 'insert name here' 4 Lyf!", but one piece of artwork stuck with me in particular. Someone had taken the time to draw a man's face with a very accurate penis for a nose, which was labelled "Nobcheese". Now, as a child I didn't quite grasp the rudeness of the drawing, thinking only that this funny arrangement of letters must be someones' name. But no, "Nobcheese" was, and still is, an insult, which my mum VERY firmly told me, after making me swear never to repeat it again, especially in front of my Grandma.

I do find myself wondering, though; is that cheeky, cocky face (see what I did there) still etched into the jungle gym now, teaching whole new generations of people the word? I like to think so, because I certainly don't want to be the only one who earned a good hiding from it!