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All the voices
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him. To emphasise this I
tried to make my own eyes
mellow and appealing.
And I can honestly tell you
this was the very first time
I was conscious of trying
to create the smiling-eyes
effect.
There was disagreement
about my limp. Some
believed I was born with
it, others that I got it later
on. My mum sometimes
said the one thing and
sometimes the other.
When she was in a self-
pitying mood she would
always find somebody to
blame for anything that
went wrong in life. Then
she’d say it happened at
school, playing football. I
fell on a spike which had
been left lying on the
ground. Nobody knew
where the spike had come
from. She said it was an
accident that could easily
have been prevented. If
the teachers had been
more caring, if they were
better at doing the job they
were paid to do. Mum said
that after the accident, my
left leg – the one that fell
onto the spike – stopped
growing at the same rate
as the other leg. Or she
would come up with a
completely different story
altogether and say a nurse
had dropped me in the
hospital where I was born
because she was a nasty
piece that one, and had it
in her to do a bad thing like
that. I had screamed Mum
said and the leg had gone
bright red and then later
on it never grew properly.
Sometimes she said I just
came out that way and
stayed that way. It was
fate. My granddad, he had
a funny leg too though in
his case it was that the