Dimensions
136 x 216 x 26mm
In Semi-detached Griff Rhys Jones recreates his suburban childhood and adolescence in precise and evocative detail; every young trauma, embarrassment and joyous rebellion, hazily-remembered summer afternoons realised into the wild of the woods and forming feral gangs.
He relives the freezing bus journeys to school and the impulsive stealing of half-a-crown from Charlie Hume's money box; holidays in the dreary exile of Weston-Super-Mare or outside Butlins at Clacton, longing to be in - images that are fixed in his consciousness, utterly fuzzy at the edges like a Mivvi but even more concentrated at the centre, frozen into a gooey sweet jam of pure recollected emotion.
A real treat for anyone who remembers or wants to know about Britain in the late 60's and 70's, laugh aloud at Griff's self-deprecating, elegant, affectionate prose, or understand a little bit better how on earth they got from there to here.