<p>Growing up won't happen on its own. You have to do something that encourages it. Growing up is hard work. It requires ingenuity and not being faint of heart. Growing up took me over forty years. Why did it take so long? There needed to be time for a number of unusual things to happen. Well, more than one hundred fifty of them. I was born after the Second World War in a working-class neighborhood in a northern city. These are the true tales told with all of the mischief and funny detail of Real Life. I suppose that the stories say something positive about growing up. That doesn't matter to me now. Well, because I've got to tell you the story of what happened to me when ...</p>