It's amazing what you'll do in front of your children. I would hate anyone to see me dancing around the room pretending to play slap bass, but my girls were so taken with Alan Partridge and his stunning mimed rendition of the base line for 'Music for Chameleons', that they insisted I show them how to do it. Ten minutes later I had downloaded the track and we were all dancing around the room, slapping away on our imaginary basses, loving Gary Numan and his nasally twang, lost in a world of black boiler suits and scowls. Gary doesn't have much hair to speak of now, which makes him scowl even more, but he was pretty good in his day and I'm delighted that my daughters are able to appreciate the music of the fabulous, frivolous 80's.

I'm not sure what their father would make of it all. I imagine he was sitting on the edge of his cloud, trying to look disapproving at our New Romantic antics, but that his thumb kept twitching in time to the beat. Charlie had great taste in music and one of the last things I remember him saying as he left for work was, 'I heard a really great track by a bloke called Finley Quaye yesterday morning.' I knew that Charlie left for work listening to Radio 4, but that he couldn't help but turn to Radio 1, to find out what was happening in the charts. And now when I hear, 'Even After All' by Finley Quaye, I think of my boy in his button fly trousers and his keeper tweed coat, smiling a smile that said, 'I may look tweedy, but I'm really a Rasta man at heart.'

This morning I had a strange kind of stereo mix effect, with 'Pretty Vacant' coming out of the sitting room and 'We Three Kings' coming out of the study. Alice was playing her keyboard, and Rosie was watching VH1, and it all came together in a rather alarming cacophony as I was trying to drink my tea and digest the day's news.

I often think about the way things have turned out. I think about my life, and of all the events that have shaped it. When I was about Alice's age I challenged the local twins to a bicycle race. Judith and Susanne Bird were keen to take me up on my offer of a race to the end of our cul-de-sac, and so we lined up, placed our feet on the pedals and went for it. I can't remember who was in the lead, but I do remember coming down the straight at full pelt, hitting something on the road and flying through the air; and then my head hit the corner of the curb stone and I don't remember any more. We didn't have cycle helmets in those days, and the speed and the force of the head to concrete collision was such that I should have been killed. But when my dad lifted me gently off the roadside and carried me to the soft grass of our front lawn, I was still alive. I remember it clearly, like I'm watching it on an old 8mm ciné projector, like I'm watching it from above. I can see my limp body being carried, my legs dangling from the crook of my dad's arm, and I can watch as he lays me out. There is no real explanation for this vivid memory, because I was unconscious at the time. And I stayed that way.

My parents had to wait for two days before I came out of the coma. I didn't understand what all the fuss was about; I didn't understand what plastic surgery was; I thought the hushed tones in which it was mentioned meant that they were going to put some sort of Tupperware device over the scar on my head to keep it fresh. I didn't understand why I had been given a fabulous toy palomino, complete with cowboy rider, saddle bags and rifle. I was totally unconcerned by the gravity of the situation, all I wanted to do was saddle up my horse with the soft, brown rubbery tack and ride him off into the sunset. It wasn't until twenty years later that I learned I had been in a coma. And now when I think back on it, I wonder why it was that my life didn't end that day. And I wonder if that blow to the head altered me I some way. It may account for my occasional verbal lapses, and my reluctance to grow up and become an adult. I know some people consider me a trifle odd, and that sometimes, when I'm wearing my white hat with the cherries on top, some people with failing eyesight also consider me a trifle, but I'm not about to change any time soon. And I'm going to carry on making life fun for my girls, and thanking God for a thick head and not much sense.

Once more with feeling, Gary...


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