Sinister

Both my daughters are left-handed, they take after me. None of us are particularly awkward or clumsy as the French 'gauche' would suggest. Nor are we 'sinister' in any way as the Latin might lead to you believe. No, in our house there's only mum who's abnormal, with her funny and peculiar right-handedness.

We were at the National Gallery for the art cart this afternoon, making cats inspired by the paintings of Boucher. And when we picked up our bag of materials to make these model moggies we were asked if either of the girls needed left-handed scissors and in seconds they were duly obtained for us. Cast your mind back to Yorkshire, 1982. I was starting senior school, aged 13 (it was different in Hull back then) and in a technical drawing class. Up goes my hand, "Sir, I need a left-handed T-square for this". Back comes the reply from the teacher, "You'll have to use a normal one, we don't cater for minorities at this school." Cheers for that.

Unlike now at the ripe old age of 41 and counting, I didn't listen to much music in those days, it was all Commodore 64 computer games for me and my mates. If I had been a bit more musically savvy at the age of 13 I could have had this on the family stereo. As it was I had to wait until 1986 and the Bend Sinister album (would you believe it, it's all come full circle...) to discover the delights of this kind of thing.