Mothmatics

It all started very early one Sunday morning. The year was 1978. Many things happened that year.

In January the Dallas Cowboys won Superbowl XII scoring 27 points to Denver Bronco’s 10. February: The People’s Republic of China decided it was time to lift bans on the works of Aristotle, Shakespeare and Charles Dickens (those dangerous fire-starting ne’er-do-wells.) Zimbabwe, which was then called Rhodesia, attacked Zambia in March. On the 16^th of April the Grateful Dead played the Huntingdon Civic Centre. The ‘set list’ included the songs ‘Jack Straw’, ‘Sampson and Delilah’, ‘Iko Iko’ and ‘Sugar Magnolia’ (none of which I know.) It is now regarded as a “totally under-rated show” which “should be considered a classic”.

Charlie Chaplin’s coffin was found about 15km from the cemetery near Lake Geneva, from which it was stolen in May. June was a busy month. Not only was ‘Garlfield’ then created (my favourite cartoon cat), the Argentina football team also found time to beat their Dutch opponents 3-1 after extra time to win the F.I.F.A. World Cup. Louise Brown of Oldham, England, became the world’s first ‘test tube baby’ in July. In August Pope John Paul I succeeded the recently deceased Pope Paul VI. Only 33 days after taking the reins, John Paul died in September. In the U.S.A President Jimmy Carter pleased all lazy/immobile drinkers by signing a bill authorizing the home brewing of beer. Still in September, Pope John Paul II (lots of Johns and Pauls in the Catholic church, and not so many Derricks) took up the ‘holy reins’ in the Vatican.

I’m sad to report that November watched in horror as Jim Jones led 918 people, whom he’d swindled through his People’s Temple Cult, to take their own lives in an horrific mass suicide in Guyana. Officially, 270 of these were children. 1978 drew to an end in December with an ‘almost-war’ – Argentina’s planned invasion of Chile. After 6 years, during which some papal mediation took place (a busy time for the Catholic church), ‘The Treaty of Peace and Friendship’ was signed between the two countries.

The crazy events of 1978 would mean nothing to me were it not for a now demolished Hospital in Fulham.  In St. Stephen’s Hospital, at 2am on the morning of Sunday 16^th April of that year, I first set eyes on the big, bad world. That morning I cried what would prove to be the first of many nerve-jangling screams. I was now cut off from total dependence, via the umbilical cord, upon my mother. To optimists, I was a bird set free to fly, to add my unique melody to the chorus of creation. To pessimists, I was one day closer to death. To my Mum and Dad, I was Thomas Vincent: an unknown quantity (weighing precisely some unkown quantity of pounds).