Where Did It All Go Right?: Growing Up Normal In the 70s

---

---

Editorial reviews

Review
'This is a book to indulge in, the literary equivalent of Horlicks before bed, guaranteed to leave you feeling all warm inside', The Observer

Following the trend of relentlessly ordinary memoirs initiated by Sylvia Smith's Misadventures, this is the male coming-of-age version. Totally unmarked by traumas and hardships, the author states that he's been inspired to redress the balance by all those who have written miserable accounts of their terrible childhoods. In this book, Andrew Collins re-acquaints himself with the young Andy and is able to see himself more clearly than most. It's not everyone that gets to look back on a day-to-day record of their growth and development with a dispassionate and sympathetic eye. He owes a debt of gratitude to one of his grandfathers who kept every single card, letter and postcard he'd sent him, and to his parents, who have 'the complete artistic works of the young Andrew Collins stored in a suitcase in their attic'. More Adrian Mole than Alan Clarke, most of the early entries are of the 'we went, we saw, we played, we ate' variety. In the first diary, aged eight, the young Collins views his world almost exclusively through TV programmes such as Tom and Jerry, Jackanory and Play School. He is immune from childhood ailments and describes himself as hardy, full of energy and seemingly unbreakable. As the diaries progress, there is very little childish introspection. Andrew's parents are hazy figures and he doesn't appreciate his four grandparents as people until he is out of his teens. Even his home town is unremarkable. Of Northampton, he writes: 'There's no outward mythology to the place. Nothing to remember it by or plan a return visit for.' By his teen years, the author admits that the diaries exhibit an irritating smugness and blames The Goodies and Monty Python for this. Entries have become 'scribbly entries with lazy, rudimentary drawings, torn pages, dishonest tampering with the text', especially with his allegiances to different girls. Despite the plethora of girls' names he admits to not being much interested in them. He doesn't lose his virginity until 18 and true to the pledge of ordinariness this rite of passage is totally excised. The author concludes that his first 17 years on earth had seemed like one long 'good stroke of fortune'. One of the drawbacks to this of course came when he hit the world outside - 'I thought that this was what life was going to be like in the foreseeable future.' Extensively footnoted, this is an enjoyable wallow in the minutiae of daily life in the '70s. (Kirkus UK)

---

Birmingham Evening Mail
A refreshing read . . . a thoroughly entertaining snapshot of life in the Seventies.

---

Glasgow Herald
A welcome visitor into any home that houses a Nick Hornby or a Tony Parsons.

---

Time Out
An unashamed nostalgia fest . . . comic gold.

---

Book Description
A feel-good memoir for the Friends Reunited generation

---

Word
Warm moments . . . thanks to the author's grasp of the anecdote.

---

Product Description
Andrew Collins was born 37 years ago in Northampton. His parents never split up, in fact they rarely exchanged a cross word. No-one abused him. Nobody died. He got on well with his brother and sister and none of his friends drowned in a canal. He has never stayed overnight in a hospital and has no emotional scars from his upbringing, except a slight lingering resentment that Anita Barker once mocked the stabilisers on his bike. Where Did It All Go Right? is a jealous memoir written by someone who occasionally wishes life had dealt him a few more juicy marketable blows. The author delves back into his first 18 years in search of something - anything - that might have left him deeply and irreparably damaged. With tales of bikes, telly, sweets, good health, domestic harmony and happy holidays, Andrew aims to bring a little hope to all those out there living with the emotional after-effects of a really nice childhood. Andrew Collins kept a diary from the age of five, so he really can remember what he had for tea everyday and what he did at school, excerpts from his diary run throughout the book and it is this detail which makes his story so compelling.

---

Synopsis
Andrew Collins was born 37 years ago in Northampton. His parents never split up, in fact they rarely exchanged a cross word. No-one abused him. Nobody died. He got on well with his brother and sister and none of his friends drowned in a canal. He has never stayed overnight in a hospital and has no emotional scars from his upbringing, except a slight lingering resentment that Anita Barker once mocked the stabilisers on his bike. Where Did It All Go Right? is a jealous memoir written by someone who occasionally wishes life had dealt him a few more juicy marketable blows. The author delves back into his first 18 years in search of something - anything - that might have left him deeply and irreparably damaged. With tales of bikes, telly, sweets, good health, domestic harmony and happy holidays, Andrew aims to bring a little hope to all those out there living with the emotional after-effects of a really nice childhood. Andrew Collins kept a diary from the age of five, so he really can remember what he had for tea everyday and what he did at school, excerpts from his diary run throughout the book and it is this detail which makes his story so compelling.

---

From the Publisher
A feel-good childhood memoir for the Friends Reunited generation

---

From the Author
A note about this edition: it's repackaged, redesigned, smaller and cheaper with nice quotes on the cover. Just better all round really. It also has in it a sneak preview chapter from the forthcoming sequel Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now (published July 2004). That's all I want to say really.

---

Customer reviews

review by: The Banker date: 2008-05-23 rating:
YOU COULD FALL ASLEEP WHILE ANDREW COLLINS SEARCHES BACK THROUGH HIS CHILDHOOD LOOKING FOR SOMETHING WORTH REMEMBERING....
Where did it all go right....? Good question andrew collins, but unfortunately - no-one cares.
Andrew`s family once appeared on `telly addicts` and he spends pages telling us what they all wore, which jumper noel edmunds wore, what the questions were - and even the answers and how they arrived at them. Then we get to read page after page of andrew`s family tree - who did what for a living, whether they had an allotment or not, if they could drive a car...
On pancake day, andrew, along with all his school friends, went on a visit to the local fire station....then we read about him playing with his action man...
(it really is a job and half keeping up with all the excitement in this book...)
Andrew thinks too many `whingers` have written books about their terrible childhood - like dave pelzer ( a child called it ) and he wants to tell us about `a normal childhood.`
Andrew, i`m not sure you know what `normal` is, because no normal person could even hope to get away with writing such boring and utter drivel.It`s like watching a complete stranger going through all the family albums and giving you the complete run down on every single person that has ever been even remotely related to them.
I mean, imagine yourself being riveted while he rambles on..
-:
"Pap collins never learned to drive, a moped was as far as he got. My other grandparents both drove, he well into his seventies. Nan passed her driving test first time well into her fifties, but then was too anxious to use the car.."

So you`ve been searching all these years for something that went wrong andrew...? I think this book could be it.

---

review by: Mr T date: 2008-05-13 rating:
I can't review this one objectively...
,,,because I was born in the same town just 3 years later. Thus I devoured it and passed it on to my brother who found it even more evocative.

I suppose if you were born in the mid to late 60s or if you are a Northamptonian, you'll love it. If you're not, you may find it less appealing but it's warm without being sentimental and it's still a lovely account of middle England in an age that's now lost.

If you want a humorous book by another person from the same town, set later in time and with the usual London-centric view of the town, try Robert Llewellyn's 'The Man on Platform 5' (a sort of 'trading places meets queer eye' in softback)

---

review by: katywheatley date: 2008-04-28 rating:
A Normal Book for Normal People
I grew up in the Seventies not a million miles from Northampton and this book rang a lot of bells for me in many ways. The weirdest thing was recalling that we too used to call stuff we rated, 'skill' something I had totally forgotten until I read this book!

The book is a lot like life, some dull bits, some funny bits, fairly variable overall. I found it entertaining rather than compulsive and amusing rather than hilarious, but good enought to merit me bothering to find the next one to read (Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now).

And he's right. It's about time someone wrote more books about growing up normal...

---

review by: Magic Rat date: 2008-04-24 rating:
A generally most enjoyable read
All in all, this is a most satisfying read, especially for anyone who was born between the mid fifties and the late sixties. In case you weren't born between these years and you're wondering, by and large it really was exactly as Andrew Collins describes "growing up normal". Nothing too outrageous happened, we lived a largely hand-to-mouth existence, nowhere near as austere as our parents' generation, but very thrifty all the same. Little pleasures mattered a lot and Collins captures this superbly. His narrative is easy to read and the passages about his grandparents are particularly sensitive and poignant. I do, however, agree with my fellow reviewer who finds the use of footnotes slightly irritating. One has to interrupt the flow of one's reading to read the footnotes. Collins could simply have given us the information concerned in the regular text.

It is somewhat disappointing to see that Collins appears, by his thirties, to have turned into the kind of "new man" that simply doesn't fit with the healthy, (dietarily and culturally) upbringing he had. Very disappointing.

His claims of being involved in the "punk scene" are also somewhat wide of the mark, as he is taking about the years of 1980-81 and buying records by groups like The Undertones and The Boomtown Rats, who were, as any true punk knows, impostors.

Great to see Collins namecheck the "Molesworth" books though.

Generally a good effort, although it is now becoming a little tiresome to read lists compiled by middle-class thirty-somethings of all their teenage girlfriends. Nick Hornby, you stand accused....


review by: gaskella2 date: 2008-04-10 rating:
An enjoyable nostalgia trip
You had to be there, and if this is your era you'll probably enjoy much of this affectionate and witty account of being an absolutely normal schoolboy through the 1970s. Collins uses his journalistic skills to highlight and make relevant what it's like to grow up outside London in a town or city where nothing much happens (which is of course what it was like for most of us).
The bit that was missing for me was the whole teenybopper bit, but I am a girl - boys' concerns were slightly different!

---

Similar products

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now: My Difficult Student 80s
Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North
Cider with Roadies
That's Me in the Corner: Adventures of an Ordinary Boy in a Celebrity World
Lost in Music

---

Similar categories

Books . Subjects . Biography . General
Books . Subjects . Biography . Historical . Social & Urban History
Books . Subjects . Biography . General AAS
Books . Refinements . Language (feature_browse-bin) . English
Books . Refinements . Age (feature_two_browse-bin)
Books . Refinements . Format (binding_browse-bin) . Paperback
Books . Refinements . Condition (condition-type)

---