I've always entertained the idea of going feral. At 8 years old after an unfortunate incident involving a baby rabbit and the bottom oven of the aga, I found I had no option but to divorce my parents. I stole a length of cane from the sweet peas, raided my father's sock drawer for a red spotted handkerchief, packed up my Easter-bunny chocolate which I had been saving for just such an occasion, and set off, chocolate in the handkerchief on the stick, to make my own future.
I crossed two fields before I sat to rest and eat my picnic. Feeling a bit sick, I continued over another field. Then I came to barbed wire.
I have never been able to process failure so on this occasion I made a conscious decision to return home for more sustenance. Without the reassuring weight in my bindle stick, I felt vulnerable. I wouldn't know which berries I could eat. I wasn't used to hunger and it was a frightening prospect.
I am grateful to my parents that they never sought to remonstrate with their failed hobo. They greeted me as if I had never been away. I was able to slip sheepishly back into the routines of tea-time and taunting my sister without loss of face.
But here I am now, living safely on the museli-belt in north London, wanting to run away again. I wonder will I end this back in the bourgeois with my tail between my legs like nothing ever happened?
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