I've just come across a container full of all my schoolboy achievements.
That is one cramped matchbox, I can tell you.
I was so success-starved as a youth, I got a bogus certificate knocked-up for reaching puberty - with a 'well done' message from Hugh Heffner. Cycle proficiency and 50 length swimming certificate are still numbers one and two, under 'academic achievements', on my CV.
The Tufty Club - a 1960s road safety initiative - gave me a badge for looking 'right, then left' before crossing the road. David Styles, the fat kid, looked 'right, then left', but got mowed down by a cyclist because he was facing the wrong way when he did it. He was in plaster for a month and got a letter from Tufty the Squirrel telling him he'd failed.
I think he turned to crack cocaine as a teenager and blamed Tufty.
"You act as if you've endured failure all your life," scoffed Colin as I highlighted my many failings.
"Not so," I assured him, "more 'embraced failure'."
The assortment of St Andrew's Youth Club table tennis trophies, Kung Fu correspondence course diplomas ('congratulations - you can now blind an assailant with an egg whisk') and scouting honours, contains one nugget. In 1967, I won a national Cadbury's competition for writing about a day in the life of a cacao plantation worker, 'Sixpence'.
The company gave me a special box of chocolates and a certificate. I've still got it - and a copy of the winning work, which caught the judges' eyes despite its brutality and underlying anti-colonial message.
They were obviously taken by extracts such as:
11am: Horsewhipped again...this is getting boring.
noon: Mmmm...chicken feet broth. My favourite.
10pm: A good day! Managed to pick 800 cocao pods despite my leg injury, caused by a crocodile at the waterhole, and was only whipped once (which I deserved). Must go now.
Got a goat to kill and feed to my ten children. Byeeeee.