Semi-detached

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In Semi-detached Griff Rhys Jones recreates his suburban childhood and adolescence in precise and evocative detail; every young trauma, embarrassment and joyous rebellion, hazily-remembered summer afternoons realised into the wild of the woods and forming feral gangs. He relives the freezing bus journeys to school and the impulsive stealing of half-a-crown from Charlie Hume's money box; holidays in the dreary exile of Weston-Super-Mare or outside Butlins at Clacton, longing to be in - images that are fixed in his consciousness, utterly fuzzy at the edges like a Mivvi but even more concentrated at the centre, frozen into a gooey sweet jam of pure recollected emotion. A confident middle child, Griff adored his mother Gwen and father Elwyn - a shy doctor and woodwork fanatic who loathed the tedium of English social ritual but had a penchant for sweeties and ice-cream and was constantly battling with his weight.