Luke is from Shrewsbury, England. Below he talks about his childhood in England.
Shrewsbury, England
My Childhood in England
Playing with my Father and Sister in the snow in our back garden when I was 3.
A bowl of cereal, usually Rice Krispies or porridge with golden syrup, and a piece of white bread toasted with margarine on it. To drink I might have had a glass of milk.
Playing video games either on the Playstation 1 at the weekends, I mainly played the Spyro and Crash Bandicoot series’ of games.
4 – My mum, dad, sister and me.
English. We are not taught any languages at primary school, although my parents made an effort to teach me basic French as we went on holiday there often and I picked up the odd phrase.
As a kid, a scientist, because I really enjoyed science at primary school.
That older kids would beat me up or otherwise hit me and I wouldn’t be able to fight back. That or my parents dying which I think is fairly ubiquitous.
At home, often played some video games (mentioned above), some board games like battleships and connect four. At primary school I would play football (soccer) and a lot of like, role-playing mock-fighting games with friends usually based around the Lord of the Rings films.
Blue Peter and Newsround from CBBC, but also my dad had these VHS tapes of an American educational show called the magic schoolbus which me and my sister loved. I also watched the Simpsons and other cartoons, and the big tv gameshows for kids like 50/50 and jungle run.
Anything and everything. I liked comics such as Calvin and Hobbes but I read books extensively all throughout my childhood. Favourite books series included the Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell; the Famous Five and other Enid Blyton books; the Alex Ryder series by Anthony Horowitz and of course, like every child growing up in Britain at the time Harry Potter. I think the sheer dominance of Harry Potter is hard to conceive now because EVERYONE read them at school… kids even competed with one another to read them fastest when a new one came out. Even the kids who basically never read anything, read Harry Potter.
As a child it was always before 8pm up until I was 14, I am fairly sure it was even earlier than that so like 6.30pm when I was very young, then it changed every half an hour every few years as I got older.
Very. I would say I have a huge amount in common with most white, middle-class people from England.
Early teens might be more into sports like football and for guys especially, video games. Both genders would do sleepovers, and hang round the local shops on Saturdays or go to town to get McDonald’s or go to the cinema. As soon as people hit puberty though, around 14/15 yrs old, house parties become the big thing with Alcohol playing a huge role. It’s not exactly like Skins, but it shares some aspects with that TV show if you have ever seen it.
Japan, as I did Ju Jitsu for a long time and wanted to experience the culture, and also my Aunt had lived there for 2 and half years. I also wanted to visit New Zealand as The Lord of the Rings was for a long time my favourite set of films.
Yes, we often had two holidays a year, one domestically in the UK and one overseas usually driving to the South of France. We always camped, I don’t think I stayed in a hotel until I was an adult.