Jim came out sideways, more or less. ‘Fuckin’ Jesus Christ’, yelled his mother, pretty much in the way she had been taught all her life not to. ‘The little bastard’, she expired, expressing no more than the truth in her dying breaths. They were the only words she ever spoke to him, if you discount the stricken moans of mortality, an undercurrent which stayed with him all his life. The words themselves offered no adequate guidance for his time on earth. He would have to make his own mistakes with no parental assistance at all. It was a tough start, what with the curvature of the spine and all. On account of his being hauled out sideways.

Ok. That is more than exaggeration. He was straight as a ramrod, no flat feet, not a trace of a homosexual tendency. His future was mapped out, in those days when such things mattered. For now, though, he was screaming at his mum to wake up and give him a feed, as you would, when you had just killed her. His first vain cry for help.