Free The Living Years by Mike Rutherford

about the parade ground bringing alarm and despondency to the classes going through the hoop thereon.
    Regarding my own future career, I’d tried to get my dad to let me study for A levels in London but after being thrown out of Charterhouse by Chare (albeit with ten O levels) my stock wasn’t high. Like most boys leaving the school I had also been sent for an aptitude test at King’s College, Cambridge, to see what kind of career might suit me. The results probably hadn’t impressed Dad much either:
    Rutherford, M. J.
    A fluent and perhaps rather disorderly boy, distinctly below average in IQ. If he has talents they seem likely to emerge on the arts side rather than in the sciences. My impression is that he might do much better outside the confines of conventional education.
    Meanwhile Pete was studying at Davies, Laing and Dick in Notting Hill Gate, the coolest crammer in the country, and generally leading the life I wanted to lead. He’d bought a London taxi and wore a long black coat and a big scarf. His persona was changing. He was becoming more outgoing and looked part of the cool London set. As for Jonathan King – who was only a few years older than us – he was driving around London in a white Rolls-Royce and living in a mews house. (I used to wonder about his bathroom: it was all mirrors so that when you sat on the loo seat, you saw yourself going on forever and ever. We all thought he might be gay, but in those days that kind of thing wasn’t discussed.) Tony, who was a year ahead of Pete and me, was finishing his A levels at Charterhouse and getting ready to study Chemistry at Sussex University. And there I was, out in the sticks.
    I did at least have some freedom in Farnham. Mum had found me some smart digs – she wasn’t going to have me living in a bedsit – although the downside was that the odd character who ran the place was way too sharp for me to sneak my girlfriend past him. I think he’d been in service as a butler somewhere once, but he was now silver-haired with permanently brown, nicotine-stained fingers. There’d often be a tap on the door if he thought something funny was going on: ‘Is everything all right in there?’ He’d then lean on the door post, leering at you slightly. Fortunately my girlfriend Josie’s digs were owned by a deaf old lady so I could sneak through the front door without being heard.
    Josie was pretty, blonde and also a student at Farnborough Tech. When I wasn’t having long lunches in the pub (I had no intention of doing any work after Charterhouse), I spent most of my time with her. We even went away for a week in Wales together. I didn’t think my parents would miss me now that I was living away from home but, to be on the safe side, I told them I was going away with Ant. Unfortunately Ant then rang Hill Cottage one day, which slightly blew that one.
    ‘Hello Captain Rutherford, is Michael there?’
    ‘He’s with you. Isn’t he?’
    ‘Oh . . . ? Yes!’
    My father summoned me into the dining room the next time I went home. ‘Your mother and I are very disappointed to learn you’ve lied to us.’
    Dad would always say ‘your mother and I’ in situations like this. Perhaps he felt it made more of an impact because Mum and I were closer.
    You always think you can pull the wool over your parents’ eyes and I was planning to busk my way out of it. I quickly realized it wasn’t going to work this time. Dad would never shout but he was furious: the morality of it he wasn’t going to get into, but the lying was a very serious thing as far as he was concerned.
    I had an enjoyable, carefree time for the first year that I was with Josie. Her own father had either died or left when she was younger and I think she saw me as a bit of a father figure. Then the band started to take off and I would spend the next two years trying to figure out ways of bringing the relationship gently to an end.
    * * *
    From Genesis to Revelation
, the first Genesis album, was