Despite having the perfect build for it, and innumerable suggestions from my schoolmates (not always serious
ones) that I should become one, this was the nearest I ever got to being a jockey!
It was around the time that this photograph was taken that I had my 'operation' as it was euphemistically
called for years after in my family circle (and it's the only one I've had to date - not bad for a man of my age). I've never
to this day liked the result of it, regarding it as what it really is - a mutilation. (Being a good Protestant 'goy', I didn't
even have the comfort of knowing I was a part of an unbroken three-thousand-year-old tradition, as one or two of my schoolmates
at Cardiff High School were.) I was told later on in life that there was a good medical reason for my circumcision, so
I didn't really have a choice - something about pissing in fifteen different directions simultaneously (sounds rather
fun, actually!). Now that's not a real problem when you're wearing nappies, but you can't go on wearing nappies all your life,
so when the time came to potty-train me, not only did I say goodbye to my nappies, I had to say goodbye to something else
as well. Saying goodbye to the latter was to prove considerably more painful for me than the former!
I was later reliably informed by my elder sister (she's the little girl in the photo), who my mum dragged
along to the clinic with us both that day as well, that alone amongst the several little boys there waiting for the same procedure,
I screamed the bloody place down when my turn came! I'm not suprised. They didn't use any anaesthetic for a kick-off. They
also, at a stroke, reduced the apparent length of my member considerably, not a good idea when you didn't have much to
start off with!
In later years, on occasions, my sister mischievously reminded me, usually when I was with some female
company I wanted to impress, that it was her (then) six-year-old self, rather than my mum (who just supervised) that put the
Vaseline impregnated gauze dressings around what was left of my now very sore 'willy' over the following week or two. I bet
there aren't many boys 'out there' that can claim to have been 'touched up' by their elder sister!
She subsequently became quite an expert on the subject of 'Roundheads' v 'Cavaliers', having worn out two
husbands, one 'with', one 'without'. She tells me she prefers them 'with'!
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