I was the middle child. On the surface, to be in the middle is bad – a balance, a compromise, a nothing. That’s the way of life. But eager people travel from the middle to extreme directions. This can end up well or badly. They say some of them don’t even go to confession.
The three of us were born in successive years; in fact, my older brother Tim and I are ‘Irish twins’. That means there’s less than a year between us. Eight days less, to be precise – Mum and Dad were fast movers, pioneering the ‘Coitus “Non”- Interruptus’ approach years before it became fashionable among the Vikki Pollards of today. In many ways my brother’s a classic ‘Timothy’. He has what I would call ‘Posh Tourette’s’, a politer version of the usual affliction: at least half of his vocabulary consists of the words ‘thank you’, ‘please’ and ‘sorry’, spat out like friendly fire from his ‘Timmy’ gun. Sometimes you’ll walk past him and he’ll mutter, ‘Sorry’, for merely encroaching into your vicinity. And when you ask him to ‘Please stop saying sorry’ (I can be quite polite sometimes too), he’ll reply (you guessed it): ‘Sorry!’ An apology fetishist.
Tim loves to show people a good time. Apparently, cheering people up is now recognised as a form of intelligence, because, in his own words, ‘If you’re surrounded by happy people it’s bound to rub off eventually, and surely the whole point of being intelligent is to be happy?’At least, that’s how he tried to explain it to me – and he’s always had straight ‘A’s, so he should know. Like all brothers, we’re different and we’re the same. When I’m in the company of happy people, I can’t help monitoring them – just to check if they’re doing it properly.
My younger brother, Chris, is 14 months younger than me. On a good day, I’d describe him as a world-class party animal and all-round ‘dog with two dicks’, but on a bad one I’d probably plump for Peter Stringfellow – as in, all the qualities of Peter Stringfellow except for the ability to operate a lap-dancing franchise – with a sprinkling of Crocodile Dundee thrown in for good measure: all the qualities of Crocodile Dundee except for the ability to handle aquatic reptiles. He negotiates visitors and students around Venezuelan beauty spots and organises parties for stinkingly rich types who’ve lost their imagination (there’s always a price to pay).
At school he was popular with the ladies, possessing golden curls, a cherubic countenance and the kind of mischievous streak that weak-willed females are fond of labelling ‘irresistible’. Girls in my class would spell out his name on the back of their hands and along the length of their chubby arms, often dispensing with the love heart and arrow. Just the name was enough: Chris Patterson. The Scots like things simple (porridge is oats, water and salt remember?). Then they’d ask me, ‘How come yir brar’s such a ride and yir so minging?’*
As usual, there was no hole in the ground to swallow me up – even a pothole or drain would have done just fine. Ponytailed schoolgirls are the CIA overlords of playground terrorism, and they’d sent me to Guantanamo Bay. Hopefully, that meant things couldn’t get any worse. And on the plus side, when I received my first compliment from a member of the opposite sex, 24 years later, I felt just like Hitler must have felt when Mein Kampf was published.
* To this day, a schoolgirl with a Scottish accent can reduce me to a burbling wreck.