At the Sharpie end...

I bought a set of 24 rainbow coloured sharpies this week. It was a whim, I didn't plan to buy them but when I saw them I thought - yes, I'll have those. So I did.

They took me back to the crayons I had when I was a kid. I guess we all had waxy crayons that we scribbled on cheap paper with. I used to scribble away all the time and I wish I still had some of them, but alas my suns, trees, houses, and cats were all destined for the bin almost as soon as I churned them out. None of my childhood scribblings was destined for the fridge door or even the coal hole wall. Obviously, my parents didn't know much about art (or anything else really).

From wax, I progressed to pencil crayons. They were much better for poking my sisters with (wax didn't leave a mark) and colouring books became something of an obsession. Of course, I was always in trouble for going outside of the lines (I was always a creative jaynius) and the thing was I wanted to go outside of the lines, I wanted to use a different way of colouring, I wanted to make a mess - and I still do.

Paints were next, those bright powerful powder paints that came in massive tins at infant school. I loved to paint on Friday afternoons (the day we did painting in the terrifying, purple-haired, Mrs Briars' class at school) and I was particularly fond of painting underwater scenes with fishes and rocks and the occasional masked diver (probably too much Stingray - I was in love with Aqua Marina - and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).

There were times when painting and drawing were all I wanted to do (which probably explains why I was so shit at my times-tables) and anything remotely 'arty and crafty' (dahling) absorbed me completely. Of course, my father thought it was all a bit sissy ('what's wrong with football and woodwork you nancy boy?') and I still have nightmares about coming home from school to find my latest painting folded over and over and placed carefully in the kitchen bin so that I would (absolutely, definitely, and without a doubt) find it.

Of course, his ignorance and dismissiveness made me even more determined to defy him. I did have a bit of a talent for art and football struck me as quite, quite, pointless. To say that he lacked any finer feelings was a bit of an understatement and I was never going to be like that, spending hour after hour in the library reading about art and artists (I never saw him with a book at all, let alone an art book. I'm not even sure he knew what a book was for). I don't think he was very happy when I went off to art college, pleased to be rid of me yes, but not pleased that I wasn't an apprentice welder.

As it turned out ART (small 'a' really) stood me in good stead. I took a tiny amount of talent and mixed it with large amounts of bullshit, bravado and bollocks, then spent my whole life fiddling about with art and design in one way or another. I even made a pretty good living at it and most of the time it didn't feel like I was working, just scribbling on paper with my wax crayons like I did when I was a kid.

I sometimes I wonder what I'd have ended up doing if he'd actually encouraged me in my artistic attempts. I disliked him so much (and still do) I'd have probably become a bricklayer just to spite the horrible, soulless, bastard. After, saying that I'd have probably never have laid the bricks in a straight line. Straight lines are not my thing, I like going outside of the lines.

Anyway, I bought a sharpie set this week. I wonder what I'm going to do with it? Cosmic baby!