The awkward moment of my conception.

My father never wanted children, which he told us quite openly.

His father before him, had told him the same, advising against it. With the kind of enthusiasm my gene pool showed in evolution, it's a miracle I was concieved at all.

But it did happen eventually. Quite quaintly in the woods behind my childhood home in fact; the same woods where my latter-day friend Phillip Moleford would bury his latter-day porn magazines.

I like to think of my conception as a late 1970's summer's day picnic, infused by beautiful energy and pine cones. A wicker hamper, packed with love by my mother, repacked later with Austrian efficiency by my father. Slices of apple, exotic crab sandwiches, and a nice bottle of Lambrusco to one side, packets of cheesy Quavers spilling over a tartan rug that would become the canvass of my invention. I sometimes wonder if Oswald had those little clips that connected your plate to your glass. Probably did, the smooth old bastard.

My birthday puts the date of conception at November, which in the greenery of England can be a slightly sodden time of year. In reality my summer picnic was probably a damp wriggle in Oswald's blue Cortina. Since he wasn't an advocate for having children, I can't think that he had planned to conceive his first born in the Cortina, rather it was the surreptitious ovum of my mother which necessitated the naughty wriggle.

At the time of this particular jaunt in the woods or illicit passing of bodily fluids, Anne Igg was 27 and lived with Oswald in a flat in Stretham. At only 18 she had said goodbye to the beautiful maiden name of Merlin and began life as an Igg. Coming as she did from a large family who lived in a two up, two down, in the urban body mole that is Morden, the eighteen year old Anne found the charismatic and foreign Oswald all worldly and exotic. She was warned by girlfriends not to trust his easy charm, but she got sucked in. This fellow wore platform boots with his initials painted on them and owned a gold identity braclet for god's sake; he wasn't going to forget his name and she wasn't going to stand a chance against props like that.

Romance blossomed and sprouted little green shoots all over South London. Gin and tonic in the Dog and Fox followed ice cream on Wimbledon Common, and within two weeks my mother had mellowed the eternal wolf into sweet submission and near instantaneous marriage.

From the day of their marriage to the moment of my conception, my father had dodged fatherhood and my mother's inventive ovum for nine years. He made up excuses, invented worst case scenarios and even bought Siamese cats to dissuade my mother from motherhood. But by the time one cat had run away and the other had committed the act of suicide, my mothers ovum finally put down the copy of hello! magazine it was reading and got into action.

My father didn't jump for joy when Anne Igg announced her pregnancy with me. Nor did he fart rainbows of delight when three years later my Brother started growing in her oven. The first time (actually second, because we had an older brother or sister who was sadly miscarried) my mother uttered the words, "Oswald, I'm pregnant", I'm pretty sure all he would have heard was his father's voice going, "Oswald, Oswald. You fell for the classic blow job in the car park trick, you idiot."

Nine months later, Anne Igg squeezed out a fourteen pound baby and pronounced the shrivelled mess, Archibald Igg.

I was such an ugly, chewed-up-bubble-gum looking baby, that my father instantly began a family joke that still pleases him to this day. He maintains that I was mixed up with a gypsy baby who was born in the bed next to my mum. For years I believed him whenever he'd announce that he was returning me back to my real parents, taking a sharp detour off the motorway into a muddy lane with caravans and chained-up dogs.

And so it was that the Igg bloodline was given another stab at life.