In the beginning was The Word, then came The NUMBERS

Origins...

In the beginning was The Word, then came The NUMBERS

chapter 1

I grew up in a Greater London suburban town called Hillingdon Middlesex. I was born in Hillingdon hospital 1975, February 15 Saturday 10:30 pm. I was named Thomas Sidney Bushnell. In fact, I was Thomas Bushnell the fourth, The first 10 months of my life, I lived in Harefield, a small village , a beautiful village in the Middlesex countryside where I lived with my parents and my grandparents in my grandparents home. Some of you have heard me mention Eileen and Sidney my dear guardian angel grandparents, it was there that I lived for the first 10 months of my life. We then moved with my parents to 29 Snowdon Avenue Hillingdon. A few months later, my sister Tanya was born. My earliest memory or vague recollections of shimmering darkness in my mind being aware that I was alive. My first actual memory is sitting on my parents double bed. There’s light sky blue carpet & I’m sitting on the bed with my sister Tanya for Christmas, her first Christmas which would’ve been my second Christmas; but I would’ve still been under the age of two. My second dated memory is about a month later, January 19, 1977, I am sitting in the hospital with my grandfather “Poppa” Sidney Charles Wood, with my Bubba Puppa book, waiting for my sister Sarah who has just been born. Somehow I lost my Bubba Puppa book. I feel the nurse might of stolen it, but I don’t know.. My childhood was a fun childhood. I was given the space to to grow and develop I had a strict upbringing. My dad was very strict, but I felt loved and cared for at home and particularly at my safe haven of my grandparents home, when I go to Harefield each Sunday for Sunday roast.. I can hear the “click” of the garden gate at 43 Dove Dale Close, as we would eagerly walk walk into Nannies ready for dinner, the door would always be open and I could smell nannies roast dinner. It was always clean and tidy everything in its place and it was a safe comfort, pleasurable place & I was loved. Kimmy was my grandparents lovely golden Labrador dog, so soft gentle & protective.

Poppa was a man of few words when he spoke we would listen. He was always there in the background supporting Nanny, my parents, Me, Tanya, Sarah and the rest of my siblings as they were born, and of course Kimmy the dog. as my immediate family grew I remember Christmas’ is there a huge sack of toys from Father Christmas at Nanny’s, but really it was from Nanny & Poppa. I Remembering the Christmas of 1984 at my parents in Snowdon Avenue, opening up a Jabba the Hutt that my parents bought me and then later that day I went to Nanny & Poppa’s and got more Star Wars figures & a Return of the Jedi speeder bike. I think I might of got that from mum and dad as well. There’s an early photograph of me with Darth Vader in Eastcoat was or was it Hayes or Ruislip at the toy shop, near the train station. I believed it was gonna be the real Darth Vader who turned up, but I soon realised it wasn’t because he was too short to be Darth Vader, which reminds me of the more recent photo of Me, Tarot by Janine & Mark Attwood, or in another timeline Han Solo, Princess Leia & Luke Skywalker, when she utters those immortal words, “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper” :) Attwood can get as good as he gives, its been fun in the trenches with him..

Back to childhood memories, as you’ve gathered by now I was really into my Star Wars figures, I had a wonderful imagination creating worlds saving everyone. I had this feeling of saving everyone, a game I’d play on my parents bed was imagining it to be a spaceship and we would venture out away from the bed spaceship, reaching out as far as possible, but as long as we created a human chain between me and my sisters, no one was lost. Gives me a somewhat similar feeling in this now bigger picture, of trying to save as many people as we can in this the current great awakening.

I had a small box room, a single bed, a wardrobe and enough room just to open the door. In the attic there were these styrofoam huge poster sized black & white photograph boards of the Beatles, that comprised the ceiling of the attic/loft, Memorable & iconic for back then. I remember evenings when it would rain on the window pain of my small box room, and there would be street lights in the alley, that would light up the water drops on my window pane. I would look closely into the drops and see what I thought were organisms. They were probably dust particles, but maybe organisms. It gave this microscopic affect and I used to think I was looking into different worlds under the microscope of the raindrops on my window pane, maybe a bit of imagination maybe a bit of reality..

My first girlfriend was called Gemma, I went to her house for tea. I think I was aged four maybe five, it was her brother that gave me a SpiderMan model, of Spiderman on some kind of wooden bannister catching a baddie..