experiences. In a way, perhaps, both Mum and I were addicted and needed our regular fixes. I didn’t know any other way. There always was and always would be endless amounts of chocolate, toffees, bubble gum, and whatever I wanted, just about whenever I wanted to eat it. But free candy for a schoolkid was an eyebrow-raising thing to have on tap no matter what was happening at home.
In those days, you could eat as you wished and not be in the slightest bit concerned about what you ate. We didn’t worry about choosing fair trade, UTZ certified coffee beans, or Rainforest Alliance–approved chocolates, for example. We didn’t feel guilty if we chose our food from non-sustainable sources or from children trafficked into the trade in Western Africa. And we didn’t worry about the nutritional content. We didn’t know any better.
Our confectionery in the 1970s was packed full of artificial colors and flavors, but we didn’t mind. We quite happily got on with the important task of destroying the planet. Nowadays, we’re bombarded with new, often conflicting takes on why we should or should not eat something. But in those days, we did as we wanted and didn’t care too much that 80 percent of our confectionery contained artificial colors. (Now 85 percent doesn’t.)
For better or for worse, my childhood diet was brilliantly inappropriate. I certainly wasn’t on the receiving end of good nutritional advice. It didn’t seem to make a huge difference eating all that lot then. Despite my dreadful diet in my youth, I went on to row for England for the Under 23’s British junior team in 1986 in a coxless pair, and that was just before winning Henley Royal Regatta in a coxed four, a few years later.
Here I am today as one of the leading experts on candy and sugar consumption.
But now at least I can say I know how bad the things that I am eating are, when previously I had no idea.
My diet was a hit-or-miss affair. Breakfast, for example, was cooked in a frying pan that was seldom washed up, so fried eggs would have these disgusting lumps of burned garlic embedded into the base of the new, crispy, overcooked fried eggs that went into the pan.
I was overweight and my teeth were desperately out of line and full of gaping holes. I did have some dental treatment when my mother remembered, but it wasn’t until later in life that I sorted my teeth out and capped them all. I remember having a night brace at one time, to straighten my teeth out, but the dogs, to their delight, discovered it and chewed it up when I left it on my bedside table. It was never replaced.
The dogs’ teeth were in a bit of a state, too. Actually, after a while, they had no teeth left to attack the post or my brace with. Perhaps it’s because they loved the toffees so much—or rather my friends and I did. Part of the fun would be to test the toffees on the dogs and watch the poor creatures screw up their faces as their jaws stuck together. In the end, they just couldn’t be bothered to chew anything at all and swallowed most sweets whole, including bubble gum still in wrappers and a good proportion of the important letters and checks for the ailing family business.
The tiny family publishing business was based in our home. Letters were strewn all over the kitchen table, in drawers, and on the couches, with typewriters on tables and telephones dotted around the ground floor.
Peggy and Sheba, we used to joke, were the complaints department, and no kidding: I saw letters being screwed up and thrown to the dogs, who ripped them up, along with unwanted bills and terrible black and white photos of marketing directors with huge collars who wanted their faces published in the magazine. Everything was left in pieces across the floor. It was definitely the worst way to publish magazines and run a business, but there were no laws or rules, and everyone did as they pleased. It’s actually astonishing the company survived.
Peggy was called Peggy because one leg didn’t work very well from when she was a puppy, and she always had one ear up and one down and couldn’t hear too well, which explains why she never did anything that was asked of her. You used to say “sit,” and she would simply get up, limp away, and focus on doing the entirely opposite of whatever you asked her.
On vacations, she was part of the family with the cringeworthy kids and the embarrassing dogs that would chase sheep all over Welsh farms while you were trying to have a quiet picnic, enjoy the view, and go unnoticed. We lived in dread that a local farmer would leap over a stone wall with his shotgun and take our dogs out.
Sheba was Peggy’s mother, and her trick was to chew the lovely Edwardian sash windows in the house when you opened them. She had a thing about windows and car seat belts, which added to the general madness of our house. As soon as you opened a window, she would race into the room and leap toward the base of the sash, hang from it without her back legs even touching the ground, and bite it furiously. Absolutely nuts!
There wasn’t really any one moment when we became that crazy candy family in the leafy plane-tree suburbs of North London. We were just always a bit odd from the beginning. There was a reason, I guess, for the neglect of my well-being. But, no, don’t worry! This is not an I-was-an-ignored-child book. Far from it; some say I could claim title to the best childhood ever—free sweets all the time and a mother who hardly knew or cared if I went to school.
I didn’t think much about being different until later on. When I started senior school at eleven years old, I discovered that my friends had things like clean bedrooms, ironed clothes, and other curiosities. I was used to being able to write my name in the dust under my bed and surviving with one clean pair of socks a week. The socks would stand up stiff without bending by Friday.
However, the layers of dust had been like this for many years. Years before my father contracted cancer, I developed a nasty lung condition called pleurisy, when I was six years old, that nearly killed me before him.
My diet was terrible for as long as I can remember, since my mother had always been drinking. She boasted that she drank Guinness when she was pregnant with me, right from the start. So even at the age of six, there were times when the candy was all there was to eat—so it was unsurprising that I fell ill occasionally. But I knew this illness was bad when my relations started turning up at the front door with presents and all sorts of goodies, even store-bought candies. They were a rare thing; we Kennedys never had to buy sweets.
I was left in the living room, where I could hear friends and relations sniffling and blowing their noses outside the door. I must have looked a bit rough. They talked as if they might not see me again. Even the hospital staff nurses came out to me rather than having me go to them, so I knew something was up. But at least I finally received some attention, another relatively rare commodity in the house.
There was a lot of whispering behind the living room door during my home hospital experience. I didn’t know it, but I was on the way out. The dust had taken its toll on me. I was moved down to the living room for weeks on end. I think my mum realized that the bedroom full of dust was not such a good idea.
I had lost the use of my left lung. I was nearly gone. When you are seriously ill, you don’t actually know how close you are to the end, especially when you are young. It’s a bit of a novelty. You just think it’s cool that the headmistress comes around to say hello and brings a present from the class with a signed card from all your friends saying, “Come back soon, we miss you.”
People around me seemed to be doing a lot of crying, which was a bit puzzling. I must have been close to death, but at the time I felt beautifully dizzy—there was no pain, but it was difficult to breathe. A nurse visited every day from the hospital. Each morning, I would lay on my stomach while she massaged my back, pressing hard, and with every push these hideous dollops of brown rubbery phlegm would come firing out of my lungs and into a saucepan on the floor. I’m guessing it was probably not washed up afterward and used to boil the vegetables.
The discharge
