They tuck you up

I first came across Philip Larkin’s poem ‘This Be the Verse’ when I was 18 in the late 1970s. You know the one: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do…’

I was working as a volunteer in a care home for physically handicapped adults in Camden, north London. I had dropped out of school without doing my A levels. When I visited my parents over Easter, my father was angry about my newly acquired pierced ear and earrings: ‘What does it say about who you’re associating with? You’ve really upset your mother.’

Seething, I returned to London and conveyed to the very camp head of the care home — who had been instrumental in the acquiring of said earrings — my misfortune at having such narrow-minded parents. The next day, there was Larkin’s High Windows collection on my bed, with a bookmark tucked into ‘This Be the Verse’ — written in April 1971.