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The Boy from the Tail End of the Goldhawk Road

1.

The Boy from the Tail End of the Goldhawk Road

I was born Carl Robert Halling at the tail end of the Goldhawk Road which runs through Shepherds Bush in west London and which in the mid 1960s served as one of the great centres of the Mod movement, whose dandified acolytes were infamous for their vanity and hedonism.

I was raised in nearby Bedford Park, a comparatively genteel district close to the largely working class area of South Acton.

My first school was the Lycee Francais du Kensington du Sud, and by the time I was 4 years old, I was already bilingual. 

I wasted little time at the Lycee in establishing a reputation as a troublemaker, a popular one admittedly, but a troublemaker nonetheless, constantly in trouble.

I was popular, that much is certain, not just with girls but boys too and blessed with a vivid imagination but I was a near impossible pupil which caused my poor mother a good deal of heartache, and on at least one occasion she drove me home in tears.

I seemed born to controversy, being impatient, disobedient, mischievous, remorselessly attention-seeking, a true imp of a child, on which the full force of the innate depravity of Man appeared to have landed.

At the same time, I was friendly, sincere and open, a good friend, and well-liked.

My Judo teacher at the Budokan in Hammersmith once told someone no doubt with a sickly feeling in the pit of his stomach that whenever he heard me he always knew it was Saturday.

I was no less a trial in the quaint little back streets of suburban west London. 

My roughness could hardly have been helped by the popular music of the times. 

By the time it came for me to leave the Lycee my scholastic standing had improved a little, and after some months spent at Davies Preparatory School, I received the most glittering school report of my entire young life; and was actually declared an excellent pupil.
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