‘How to be Really Interesting’ by Steve Davis MBE

This book belonged to my dad. He has doodled on the cover with a biro, shading in the letters and signing his name. When I was young, I saw this as permission for me to similarly deface it - if dad’s allowed to draw on it, then so am I, it’s only fair. I have written my name alongside the right forearm of Steve Davis the boxer and above his left shoulder I have written the word ‘time’. I had only just learnt how to spell this word. I must have been very young, but I remember enjoying the way the magic ‘e’ on the end changes the sound of the ‘i’. My brother Ben has signed his name on the back cover in imitation of my dad’s signature, and my brother Joe, the youngest, has written his name above the right shoulder of besuited Steve Davis. The 'J' is backwards.

Looking at the scrappy biroed cover of this book, I become a detective of the past. My dad’s distracted doodles tell a cryptic story. They were probably made in the evening after work with the television on in the background, my mum knitting in the armchair, in the garish early nineties living room amongst neon clothing, perms and bowl-cuts, red grouting between the tiles in the kitchen, brown furry sofa, pink roobled carpet, Ghostbusters lunch boxes.

It was the perfect size for leaning on when writing something – doing a crossword, demonstrating maths or perhaps drawing something for me. If I examine the cover closely I can see the imprints of numbers and letters and lines, and the surface is creased like the wrinkles on a hand. It’s not a bulky heavy hardback, it’s a flimsy in-between, but gives just enough resistance to support the concerted ballpoint pressure, and this proximity to unsheathed biro led to its defacement.

I wonder when the line was crossed, the taboo broken. Which was the first pen mark made on the shiny cover?

My guess is that this book was a present for my dad. It was published in 1988. It’s a first edition and could conceivably be worth a some money if it wasn’t for the widespread biro defacement, but without these details it would have much less cultural, personal value.