During the first few years of my life, all school holidays were spent at Portavo Point, in Donaghadee, on the Northern Irish coast—the same house where my great-grandfather Walter had lived, and so near to where he ultimately died.
I loved that place.
The wind off the sea and the smell of salt water penetrated every corner of the house. The taps creaked when you turned them and the beds were so old and high that I could only reach into mine by climbing up the bedstead.
I remember the smell of the old Yamaha outboard engine in our ancient wooden boat that my father would carry down to the shore to take us out in on calm days. I remember walks through the woods with bluebells in full bloom. I especially loved hiding and running among the trees, getting my father to try and find me.
I remember being pushed by my elder sister, Lara, on a skateboard down the driveway and crashing into the fence; or lying in a bed beside Granny Patsie, both of us ill with measles, quarantined to the garden shed to keep us away from everyone else.
I remember swimming in the cold sea and eating boiled eggs every day for breakfast.
In essence, it was the place where I found my love of the sea and of the wild.
But I didn’t know it at the time.
Conversely, the school term times would be spent in London, where my father worked as a politician. (It was a strange—or not so strange—irony that my mother married a future MP, after witnessing the dangerous power of politics firsthand growing up with Patsie as her mother.)
When my parents married, Dad was working as a wine importer, having left the Royal Marine Commandos, where he had served as an officer for three years. He then went on to run a small wine bar in London before finally seeking election as a local councillor and subsequently as a Member of Parliament for Chertsey, just south of London.
More important, my father was, above all, a good man: kind, gentle, fun, loyal, and loved by many. But growing up, I remember those times spent in London as quite lonely for me.
Dad was working very hard, and often late into the evenings, and Mum, as his assistant, worked beside him. I struggled, missing just having time together as a family—calm and unhurried.
Looking back, I craved some peaceful time with my parents. And it is probably why I behaved so badly at school.
I remember once biting a boy so hard that I drew blood, and then watching as the teachers rang my father to say they didn’t know what to do with me. My father said he knew what to do with me, though, and came down to the school at once.
With a chair placed in the middle of the gym and all the children sitting cross-legged on the floor around him, he whacked me until my bum was black and blue.
The next day, I slipped my mother’s hand in a busy London street and ran away, only to be picked up by the police some hours later. I wanted attention, I guess.
My mother was forever having to lock me away in my bedroom for troublemaking, but she would then get concerned that I might run out of oxygen, so had a carpenter make some airholes in the door.
They say that necessity is the mother of all invention, and I soon worked out that, with a bent-over coat hanger, I could undo the latch through the airholes and escape. It was my first foray into the world of adapting and improvising, and those skills have served me well over the years.
At the same time, I was also developing a love of the physical. Mum would take me every week to a small gymnasium for budding gymnasts, run by the unforgettable Mr. Sturgess.
The classes were held in a dusty old double garage behind a block of flats in Westminster.
Mr. Sturgess ran the classes with iron, ex-military discipline. We each had spots on the floor, denoting where we should stand rigidly to attention, awaiting our next task. And he pushed us hard. It felt like Mr. Sturgess had forgotten that we were only age six—but as kids, we loved it.
It made us feel special.
We would line up in rows beneath a metal bar, some seven feet off the ground, then one by one we would say: “Up, please, Mr. Sturgess,” and he would lift us up and leave us hanging, as he continued down the line.
The rules were simple: you were not allowed to ask permission to drop off until the whole row was up and hanging, like dead pheasants in a game larder. And even then you had to request: “Down, please, Mr. Sturgess.” If you buckled and dropped off prematurely, you were sent back in shame to your spot.
I found I loved these sessions and took great pride in determining to be the last man hanging. Mum would say that she couldn’t bear to watch as my little skinny body hung there, my face purple and contorted in blind determination to stick it out until the bitter end.
One by one the other boys would drop off the bar, and I would be left hanging there, battling to endure until the point where even Mr. Sturgess would decide it was time to call it.
I would then scuttle back to my mark, grinning from ear to ear.
“Down, please, Mr. Sturgess,” became a family phrase for us, as an example of hard physical exercise, strict discipline, and foolhardy determination. All of which would serve me well in later military days.
So my training was pretty well rounded. Climbing. Hanging. Escaping.
I loved them all.
Mum, still to this day, says that growing up I seemed destined to be a mix of Robin Hood, Harry Houdini, John the Baptist, and an assassin.
I took it as a great compliment.