Chapter two · Skool Daze · 1985–1992
School, causes, cold water, loud music, too much responsibility and thirteen moves in nine months. I was not merely caught in the whirlwind. I was one.
How to read the pictures: the Bitmoji are visual shorthand for ideas, moods and transitions. They are not a literal photographic record.
Content note: this chapter refers to bullying, racism, parentification, adolescent mental-health crises and two overdoses, without graphic detail.
Part one
01
During my School Daze, everyone called me Maz. I answered because I wanted to be cool. Meanies turned it into “Maz the Spaz”, so answering also became a small act of defiance: they did not get to frighten me out of a name.
I did not actually care for the name or the label. “Making of Maz” is about the systems I built in this period—not the discovery of a perfect new identity.
02
I had a habit of picking up causes and supporting them. I found myself on coaches to protests in London without always being clear what we were protesting, or why.
The flag is not one particular campaign. It represents the instinct to stand beside people and act—sometimes before anyone had given me the full political map.
03
Moving under my own steam widened the world. A route was more than the distance between two places: it was independence, momentum and a way to reach the next useful thing.
I was already learning that freedom becomes real when the body, equipment, route and destination work together.
04
Through a CAL youth group I met Dorothy again. She had moved from childcare adviser to youth support worker, and gave us access to orienteering, rock climbing and canoeing through Ackers in Birmingham.
Then came a trip to Wales, where we tried those skills in the wild. I was hooked. By thirteen, a large part of my future life had quietly arranged itself.
Part two
05
I had no close friends, but I had groups of people I did activities with or sat beside in lessons. Shared activity gave social life a structure. We did not need to manufacture intimacy before we could take part.
I brought a lot of energy. Sometimes I found the door. Sometimes I made a new entrance.
06
At an all-girls school, changing-room politics felt especially complicated. I was fairly sure I was gay. Changing with the girls felt wrong, so I used the toilets; nobody could accuse me of peeping if I was not there.
I was often adjacent to the group rather than emotionally inside it. That did not mean I was not participating. Sometimes the edge of the circle was the safest, clearest place to be.
07
There were musical influences everywhere, including a brief and very funny breakdancing phase. I was trying to be cooler than I actually was. The floor remained unconvinced.
Play, movement and music let me try on possible selves without having to keep every version.
08
Winter is cold. Warm clothes make winter fun possible. This sounds obvious, but it is a whole operating principle: listen to the body, change the equipment, keep the adventure.
I also feel cold looking at people who are improperly dressed. Apparently my nervous system is willing to run their weather report as well as mine.
Part three
09
“Just get on with it” ignores the tools that make getting on with it possible. Warm layers, the right kit and something dry in reserve turn endurance into access.
I did not yet call this calibration. I simply noticed that changing the conditions changed what I could do.
10
Once the body is protected, the same cold landscape becomes material: snow forts, snowballs, movement and laughter. The weather did not improve. The system did.
11
For Christmas 1985, Mum gave me a ghetto blaster: double tape deck, buttons everywhere and, at last, autonomy over what I listened to and when.
Until then other people had controlled the radio. Now music could become something I selected, repeated, recorded and used.
12
My cousin immediately tried to convert me to Paul Young and The Cure. Dad’s family and siblings were teaching me set-piece dances to “Get Down on It” by Kool & the Gang.
The double tape deck turned all those influences into a portable private space. Rest was not always silence; sometimes it was choosing the right sound.
Part four
13
Mum worked until 10 pm and then walked home after handover. My job was to make sure Simon had eaten, our uniforms were in the laundry and his homework was done.
No one supervised my homework. Mum could not, and Dad was rarely around. Time outside was not laziness; it was where an over-employed child could briefly stop being the household’s junior manager.
14
I was responsible for anticipating what Simon would need, what the house would need and what might go wrong before Mum returned. Responsibility arrived without matching authority, support or permission to have needs of my own.
15
My relationship with Mum became strained as I challenged parentification and boundaries that did not apply to Simon. I was carrying adult-shaped tasks while still expected to obey child-shaped rules.
I asked for help. What arrived did not match the scale or shape of the problem.
16
After an overdose and sketchy mental-health counselling, I ran away. A friend and I slept in a tent in a field close to home. Mum walked country lanes towards the Girl Guiding campground because she thought I might be there.
She found me the next day and hustled me home to wait for Dad. A crisis was visible at last; understanding it was another matter.
Part five
17
Dad was angry about missing work to look for me because Mum had been nagging him. He said that if I moved in with him, he would make me pull my socks up. I accepted because I knew I needed structure.
I had also joined Sea Cadets to keep canoeing: Edgbaston Reservoir every Tuesday and Thursday evening, plus Sunday mornings. I ditched church and Sunday school without hesitation. Sea Cadets supplied a timetable even when home did not.
18
Dad’s relationships were unstable. I moved between two girlfriends’ homes and my grandparents’ house, sharing a room with his girlfriend’s daughter or with my sister depending on where we were. When both women were angry with Dad, we stayed with my grandparents.
The instability damaged schoolwork, social life and wellbeing. I took a second, separate overdose because I could not cope and nobody had listened when I asked for help.
19
Social Services at the hospital would not release me to Mum or Dad and were discussing care homes. Aunt Sue—Dad’s elder sister—said she and her family could take me once their housing was sorted.
I stayed with Aunt Bev and her little boy Simon until Easter, then moved in with Sue, Roger and their children until I finished school. A relative saying “yes” changed the available map.
Meanwhile Mum had met and married Ian and was pregnant. He voiced racist views, so I kept my distance while trying to keep the peace for Mum’s sake.
20
As soon as I finished school, Dad refused to keep paying child support. Sue and Roger said they could not afford to keep me and kicked me out. Nobody looked for funding, transitional support or another option. I moved back in with Dad.
“Didn’t cry today” is not evidence that everything was fine. It is the kind of tiny metric you use when the proper support system has gone missing.
I was learning to build portable systems because I could not rely on the structure staying still.
My hands on the buttons
The ghetto blaster did not erase the family soundtrack; it let me reorganise it. Soul, reggae and Motown could sit beside Paul Young, The Cure, pop, dance music and whatever else reached my ears.
This is not a list of the “correct” music for 1985–1992. It is the era as I heard it: cross-genre, selective and ReeStyle. Follow the playlist, or let your own ears and memories wander somewhere else.
Listen to Skool Daze · 1985–19921992
What Maz made
I did not have the language of DCA or ReeOS. I was already combining body, brain, tools, environment, community and time: warm clothes, a timetable, a canoe, a tape deck, a safe edge to the group, the relative who said yes.
Next: Young Adult · 1993–1998