Strange boy

Now here's a strange thing. As a child, I was very claustrophobic for quite a few years.

I refused to go in lifts and climbed fights of stairs in London department stores, usually getting to the top before my parents did. I would be sent into a hot-blind panic if anyone locked the door on me, no matter how large the room. My brother wondered how I would fare in prison with this condition. I never found out, but he did.

At our home, the cleaning materials were kept in a small cupboard in a dark corridor. On the inside of the door, someone had chalked an inventory of the contents. I still remember the handwriting. It read something like, Hand Grenades - 25. Rifles - 6. Ammunition - 5 cases, etc. etc. Our house was commandeered by The Irish Guards during WW2. Their cache became our broom-cupboard.

The plain wooden door had some ventilation holes drilled at the top of it, and there was no light inside. For some reason, you could only open the door from the outside.

Several times I would wait for my parents to go to town on a Saturday morning or afternoon, then I would immediately go into the cupboard and close the door.

I cannot describe the delicious feeling of being totally resigned to being trapped in a tiny dark space, breathing in the scent of floor wax whilst waiting the hour or two for my perplexed and angry parents to come home and release me. It was bliss.

I don't know if you can explain these opposites, but I have never managed anything more complex than some sort of return to the womb. It still doesn't explain the simultaneous claustrophobia though.