The Birth of a Legend

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Chapter 1 - Birth of a self-proclaimed modern legend

This is the autobiography of a man called Horatio. Horatio John Smith to be precise.
I am what you would call an enigma, a phenomenon if you will. I've climbed the heights, and swum the depths...
So to speak.

I'll start off at the beginning. Because that's usually where stories start.
Not that I've made any of this up of course, I haven't, really! It's all true!
(Well, except for a few 'embellishments' so to speak!).

I was born in the leafy city of Liverpool, and I was actually born in a local Chip Shop.
My mother, Julie, was heavily pregnant and fancied a chip barm, so hauled her pregnant behind to the chippy for one,
and that's where her waters broke. Of course. I've been told all this, the press were everywhere!
The Liverpool Echo had a field day! 'Barm Kid' was the headline, and boy, I didn't live that one down!

My early childhood wasn't the best either. There were always press people hanging around,
hoping for a glimpse of 'Barm Kid'. Whenever my mum had to go to the Kwik Save to get some bread and beans,
we were hounded by people wanting pictures of me. Things didn't improve a whole lot when I got to school.

You'd think that the name Horatio would be more of an attention grabber than stories of my greasy birth, but no!
I had to go through school with that hanging over my head! I got all the worst nicknames: Baby back ribs, Barm-boy,
Chippy Horatio, Prawn cracker, the list goes on!

All of this spurned me to let out my emotions in the form of music and football.
I decided to try to learn guitar when I first started secondary school, and that went well, I got into the school band,
and I also got onto the football team, as a striker. I gained friends from these experiences.
No longer was I hearing the names that had followed me through primary school. I was finally accepted.

I wasn't too fussed on exams, I saw them as the conformist's application form, so I tried to do my very worst at them.
Unfortunately I passed all my exams, with 6 B's and 2 C's.

It was just after I left school when me and a few of the band members from school decided to get together and form our own sound.
Unfortunately, Peter Enstw..uh... I forget the rest of his name, the other guitarist, went all emo.
He dyed his hair black and wanted us all to do the same. Tom Eff..uh.. I forget.., the bassist dyed his,
as did Davey Inn, the drummer. But I refused to dye my ginger locks, which were an impressive 3 inches long,
and they kicked me out of the band.

I then started college, and met some new people, who weren't taken in by this whole 'emo' thing, and we formed our own band.
We were called IDidASentence (I came up with that) and started to fuse our styles together.

All this time I was practising my football. Stardom awaited. My mum had a phone call to say I had a trial.
But not just anywhere, Tranmere Rovers. One of the biggest clubs in the world (or so I was told).
I went to their training ground and tried my best. There was another guy there, I forget his name,
he was going for the same position as me, so I punched him in the mouth.

I didn't sign for Tranmere.

Anyway, back to the music. Our sound was taking shape. It was a mixture of crazy guitar licks, deep, soulful bass,
and crazy manic drumming. I was also the lead singer. Not that our songs had many words.
Just lots of 'yeah!' and 'ooh!' involved. There was something missing though. We needed something.

At home, I lived with my mum, Julie, and my dad, John. They'd decided on the name Horatio, to try to deflect attention
from the chip shop birth. As admirable there efforts were, they failed miserably. I was the laughing stock of the town.

Until that was, I became a teenager, and begun exacting egg-based revenge on those that had wronged me in my earlier years.
Needless to say, the Police didn't take too kindly to my patented 'eggs cellotaped to bricks' idea,
and I got arrested. My mum wan't too happy about that, I can tell you!
My dad however, he was more interested in the egg-brick idea, and planned to introduce it to some of his work mates.

Anyway, enough about my childhood, I have a lot of life to get through!