Two early experiences of sport are burned indelibly into my memory. In one, I am at school – infant school in Gillingham, Kent, circa 1955 – and I am pulling myself along a horizontal beam while suspended underneath it from my arms and legs. I was about five years old and this was the first time I had held my own weight like that. I felt the pull of gravity on my small body, about three feet above the ground; a fall, although not disastrous, would have been distinctly unfortunate. There was risk, but also the sense that I could control it. As I shinned along the beam in this inverted position, aiming for the opposite end, the teacher exclaimed to the other children, “Look at Colin, he's like a monkey!” I remember feeling flattered, but also slightly miffed: she was clearly impressed with my agility (and strength!), but the feat was also deemed not quite the proper thing to do. Did she think I was “showing off”? That would never do, showing off being a mortal sin in English society. To be thought to be showing off was mortifying, blush-inducing, and really not true … but then maybe a little, at least once I had been noticed. But primarily, it was gratifying to be compared thus to a monkey: have you seen how well they climb? Nobody joined me under the beam, however: lack of talent, I surmised.