Exclusive Extract from my Next Book.Diary of an Ex Essex Weirdo by Mark Antony Raines.Available soon on Amazon.

Chapter 1

So you may be thinking why has this person decided to write his life in a book that is going to be in the form of a dairy. Well, I have small vessel disease of the brain which affects my cognitive skills like memory.

I was born on a Sunday 13 th  May 1962 to my parents Tony and Barbara Raines at Rochford Hospital in Essex. At the time they lived in a Maisonette but moved to Mendip Crescent and this where I stayed most of my first 30 years of my life.

I have only vague memories of my childhood and have to credit my late mother Barbra Anne Raines who helped fill in the gaps.

I liked to play on my milk float when little in the back garden. When I attended school at Our Lady of Lourdes Manchester Drive I was quite shy to the extent that when asked to play the role of Mark Antony for a class play I refused to kiss the girl and run out of the school. I remember all the girls wearing white plimsolls with Marc Bolan or T_Rex in black ink and the time I had rice crispy cake for pudding and as I  bit into it chipped my tooth. Now I come to an event that has affected my life more than I thought bow that I have had time to reflect on it. I along with a girl who names I do not remember were called into the Headmistress office to be informed that we had been kept back a year for reasons I also forgot. Anyway to cut to the chase it meant I was always playing catch up. My Grandad worked as a caretaker at my primary school. We would visit our Grandparents on a semi-regular basis and on one trip on the way home if turned to wave goodbye and then walked headfirst into a lamppost: MY head I had a tennis ball like lump which really hurt.