Granny Bywater flushed it out and bought it for me: 12 inches of innocuous green rubber for

Granny Bywater flushed it out and bought it for me: 12 inches of innocuous green rubber for a very reasonable 1/9d, but I took against it and, as three-year-olds do, howled. Granny Bywater was mortified, imprisoned the snake in her bedside drawer, and expired in her sleep a week or so later

But it was far too late for that. I was hooked; and for most of my childhood The Sign of Four was the locus of my deepest desires.There was itching powder and sneezing powder, black-face soap and Frothing Blood Capsules; there were conjuring sets (“Look, Daddy! I’m going to drive this nail through my hand!”) and plans for compex illusions – The Mystic Egyptian Vanishing Box and New Improved Sawing A Lady In Half were my favourites – which I bought but never built, the cost of the plans having exhausted my exchequer, and anyway I was cack-handed. There were greasepaints and fright wigs and every-thing, and when the site was redeveloped, they moved The Sign Of Four up the hill, plumb spang in the middle of my route home from school.
And plumb spang next to Ace Books. Ace Books specialised in what the British used to consider “dirty magazines”: Spick and Span, Beautiful Britons, Harrison Marks effusions with generous ladies no longer in their first youth, bulging out of underwear which seemed to have been designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, not to mention the slightly more expensive Naughty Housewife series, their covers showing young and rather unhousewifely women gazing speculatively at vacuum cleaners, frying pans, spanners and plumbers.I don’t remember graduating from The Sign of Four to Ace Books. It was an osmotic process, imperceptible to the pubescent graduand, and there must have been a time when I was haunting both, before finally giving in and devoting my life to venery But last week I saw how it could have been different. A press release came across my desk, announcing the introduction of “Tony” Blair’s latest little idea, the Citizen Card, designed to stop children getting alcohol, tobacco, mags and vidjoze.

If we had had the Citizen’s Card when I was 12 or 13, I’d never have got out of The Sign of Four and into Ace Books, and so probably ended up as a gay conjuror with a natty line in practical jokes.It wasn’t just Ace Books, though It was also the tobacconist in the Council House Arcade. My underage smoking experiments live in the memory as one of the richest and most sensual periods of my life, from the moment I acquired my first packet of Condor Flake, through my experiments with Blue Book cigarettes, Boyards Mais, Sobranie Black Russian, Passing Clouds, Three Castles and returning again via Henri Wintermans Senorita cigars to the rich aromatic joys of the pipe: Clan, Holland House, John Cotton Nos 1 and 2 Mixture (Medium), Baby’s Bottom, Player’s No-Name, Skiff, Yachtsman, Royal Hunt and Blender’s Own. All that, and the under-age drinking (one vodka and I was anybody’s; two, and I was nobody’s, not even my own, but, oh, the glamour of it, the smell of the Black Boy or the Flying Horse: sherry and beer and prosperity and cigars and passing myself off as a man) and the sneaking into what then passed for movies … the time between thinking myself a man and being told by the law that I was a man was a magical illicit Saturnalia, Christmas every day.And now: “Tony” and his Little Card Feh. We fart at Tony’s little card, do we not? Instead of addressing the real dangers to our children – stupidity, relativism, corporate greed, illegal drugs, street crime – this foolish man is so scared of public opinion that he regards the electorate as his fierce intolerant mother and makes a fool of himself on television trying to pre-emptively avert her wrath. The truth is that “New” Labour are fast becoming Old Fools, pompous bores for whom everything has gone well, and who can no longer remember the delights of their youth.

Even the name of Tony’s Little Card is not just creepy but misleading: even under New Labour we are none of us citizens, but subjects Which is how they want us to behave. We may be too canny to fall for his nonsense, but if he can control the teenagers – no rebellion, no illicit anything, no evening of frottage over a dodgy copy of Debbie Does Dallas – the next generation might turn out OK: docile little Citizens, blank-eyed, diligent corporation-fodder who will cause no trouble but do as Tony says.. IN LIFE there are many different ways of getting to know someone – which is perhaps why the notional importance of first impressions is just that. There are people who insinuate themselves into your life, skulking away when you approach, tailing you from the front; and there are others who ram-raid their way into your psyche and have a rummage around to see if there’s anything they can use. But these aren’t the only polarities, as the intense singularity with which Tracey Emin has penetrated my life bears testimony. Our first encounter was in 1995 at a weekend symposium, organised by a gallery owner in Amsterdam, intended to introduce the new wave of British artists – visual, literary, performing – to their Dutch counterparts. I can’t imagine what induced me to attend this event – it’s exactly the kind of thing I abhor.

If I weren’t in the business myself, I’d never go near a cultural happening of any sort.
I’d had a crappy journey over, taking the Sally Line to Zeebrugge, then driving my Noddy car Citroen Diane through more low country than anyone should endure. After insisting on what had to be a hurried and testy lunch with my Dutch publisher, we went to the gallery so I could deliver my contribution, some jawing on London, JG Ballard and my rather nerdy enthusiasm for the interface between real and fictional topographies. The gallery was long and thin, as were the audience, all of whom were straight from central casting when the request was made for timeless, existentialist inhabitants of the inner city.I felt a certain tension in the air as I paced around the end of the avant-garde gully. It’s always pretty difficult getting English satire across to the Dutch, because they have a tendency to conflate irony and slapstick. But this wasn’t just the tension born of misconception, there was definitely trouble brewing, a few mutterings, then an imprecation – Jesus! I reeled internally, I’m going to be heckled.But I wasn’t – instead I was soundly, nakedly, publicly dressed down by a knock-jawed, dark, wrecked beauty of a termagant, who spat invective at me from a mouthful of teeth gone akimbo: “Who the hell d’jew think you are anyway, Mister Will Self, swanning in here like a fucking prima donna and pushing things all around just so as you can talk this bollocks…” I think was the general tenor of her critique, although doubtless Tracey would dispute it. It went on for quite a while – I think we exchanged opinions with some frankness – but in truth this was one of those episodes in my life that I’ve heartily repressed, ducked in the fluid deep-end of the psyche.Tracey hasn’t She reminded me of it when I went to see her for this piece.

And a strange thing happened; not only did I fully recall the incident – which I’d blanked – but I also realised that she had been completely justified in censuring me four years earlier I had been behaving like a prima donna. I had swanned in to do my bit with every intention of swanning straight off again – even though I knew damn well that anarchic gigs like these demand the most rigid social conduct. It also transpired that Tracey’s own performance slot had been jerked about in order to cope with my – wilfully – late arrival.She had me bang to rights. I thought I was behaving with icy politeness by not tearing her limb from limb; I now realise that it was Tracey who had the justification for this sort of behaviour – and that she’d been, relatively speaking, very restrained. For the rest of the weekend I made sure that our paths didn’t cross, and I vowed that the next time we met it would be me who delivered the devastating character critique.It wasn’t It was Tracey once more who got the drop on me. I had been commissioned to write and present a new cultural talk show for Channel 4, and against my better judgement agreed to do it.