Small Man in a Book by Rob Brydon Read Free Book Online

water-filled bin just outside the back door, where it would sit until the frogs arrived. We were forever building dens, and this meant that I was always gathering sticks, boughs and branches, dragging them back to the house and trying to make some kind of shelter or hideaway with them.
    From 1971 we lived on what might be called the nursery slope of a larger hill in Baglan and had a steep narrow lawn at the front of the house, perfect for sending Action Man hurtling down on a suicide mission in his jeep. I was very fond of Action Man and loved nothing more than suspending him on a length of string and dangling him from the top of the stairs, out through the banisters and down the wall at the side. I’d do this for hours, perfectly happy to watch him swing back and forth like a pendulum. In my mind he was scaling a cliff face or the walls of the castle to reach the lair of an evil mastermind. He would often have been stripped of his uniform long ago and, in a form of exhibitionism frowned on by the military, be attempting his mission naked. This was quite common in Action Men. I had several of them, almost a platoon, and within minutes of emerging from their boxes they’d be naked, huddled together in a heap like a drunken support group. With their toned muscular bodies, crew cuts and gripping hands, one wonders with hindsight exactly what sort of action these men were looking for.
    Mine would soon be out of their uniforms and in their bespoke outfits that I’d made from old socks. A hole would be cut at the toe for their head to pop through, followed by two smaller holes at the side for the arms, with an elastic band serving as a belt. It was a sort of Roman slave tunic inspired, I suspect, by Kirk Douglas in Spartacus , the first film I ever cried at, sitting on the sofa between Mum and Dad, watery eyes glued to the telly. I made quite a few little outfits for my Action Men; this, combined with a love of not only Donny Osmond but also the Bay City Rollers, might prompt the reader to a few conclusions with regards to my young self and matters of orientation. Rest assured that I always knew where to draw the line when it came to my slightly fey leanings.
    I offer as proof the time that my grandmother bought me a purple T-shirt on which was printed the face of Donny Osmond. Much as I loved what he and his crazy brothers were doing in challenging the perceived norms of contemporary music, I knew deep inside that it would simply be wrong for a young boy of my age to wear such a T-shirt. And so I broke Nan’s heart with my refusal, ‘Good God, woman, no! What the hell were you thinking?!’ That’s what a more forceful, not to say rude, child might have said. I politely declined, offering up all manner of excuses.
    Despite waving the flag for sensitive, artistic children everywhere I was also involved in more boyish pursuits, and my love of trees and dens continued to grow unabated. One particularly ambitious Sunday morning I decided to build an extensive new lair in the garden, and soon realized that I needed far more in the way of raw materials if I was to do justice to my architectural vision. So I set off just down the hill from our house to a point where a few trees stood on a grass verge at the side of the road. I climbed up, knife in hand, for twelve feet or so to where the tree divided off into a network of branches and then, sitting on one, began to saw at a limb. I tugged away at the branch with one hand while hacking at it with the other, all the while blind to the laws of physics, which confidently predicted my imminent downfall. Not unlike the splendid Wyle E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons – when he speeds off a clifftop and only falls when he looks down and realizes what he’s done – at the point that the branch parted company with the tree I suddenly recognized the folly of my ways and plummeted downwards, landing in a dead weight on the grass and knocking myself out cold in the process. Luckily for