He (or She) Ain't Heavy.

As an only child, I have bleak memories of extracating the board game Mouse Trap from the top shelf, setting it up, triggering the final chain of events and then packing it away again; happy National Siblings Day everyone.

I don’t know why I'd always get two-or-more-player games for birthdays and Christmas, when my parents had no interest in playing them. I had friends, of course - I didn’t spend my formative years locked in a cupboard; that came later - but they didn’t visit often enough to warrant me owning so many; if only my mum and dad hadn't bought them, they could have eliminated the whole “Will you play them with me?” question and the awkward “No, I don’t fancy it” response.

I guess that's was why I was so interested in magic and music as a kid, as you didn’t need other people there for you to explore it. I spent much of my childhood learning tricks or listening to records while playing along on the piano and guitar, as they were all essentially one-person hobbies; admittedly you’d need someone to show the tricks to from time to time, but you could also spend ages just mastering the prestidigitation; there’s a word you don’t drop into conversation very regularly.

That’s not to say I was lonely; on the contrary, I had lots of fun. On sunnier days, I’d head to the bottom of the garden and hide in the space between our garden shed and the fence that looked onto the allotments; the gap was tiny really, but it was just big enough to set up camp, plus it was as far away from the house you could get while still being on Ephgrave property, which made it low-level exotic (as did the grapevines that grew in the greenhouse nearby).

I suppose it would have been nice to have a brother or sister, though not having one makes it hard to imagine. I always quite liked being on my own, though if I did have siblings, it would have at least made Mouse Trap more satisfying.