I was born in Birmingham in 1951 and grew up at Stripes Hill outside the village of Knowle, south of the city.
My father was born in 1886, and my mother in 1908. She was his third wife.
I was an only child with one half-brother, forty years older, who ran the family business with Dad. The business was an industrial manufactory in Birmingham, started by my grandfather in the mid-nineteenth century.
The family was wealthy, and we lived in a large house. I was loved.
My first sexual encounter was at a birthday party, aged four. A girl and I were under the piano, draped with a sheet, to conceal the legs, perhaps. It was a game of hide and seek. ‘You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine,’ she proposed.
She pulled up her skirt and pulled down her pants. The next was with our au pair, Heidi. She was giving me my bath. Rather than get her clothes wet, she undressed and climbed into the tub with me. Her pubic hair was magnetic. I asked her what it was. ‘That’s a bush,’ she said. ‘We all have those. You’ll have one when you grow up.’ It seemed quite unlikely, but I wanted hers.
