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Can a child be born strange? Or does it come from some early forgotten experience? My parents and my maternal grandmother, Nan, were loving and caring; we ate well (especially considering that this was just after the end of WWII and many foods were still rationed). Our grey house was comfortable and warm, I had plenty of toys and rag books that Mummy and Nan read to me. I don't think I lacked for anything. So why would I steal?

   At the age of five I was a thief. I had a mania for stealing paper. When I could get to school before anybody else, I went around the classroom lifting the lids of the other children’s desks and digging into their exercise books with their lined and squared pages. Then, holding my breath with concentration and excitement, quickly, carefully, I would pull out several pages from the centre of each book, bending back any give-away staples that had worked loose. A new day had made a most satisfying start. Why, or what I did with the reams of paper I must have accumulated, I haven’t the faintest idea. In our class only my exercise books glowed with plump good health, while my classmates’ books were gaunt and skeletal, but the strange thing was that nobody ever seemed to notice. Nothing was mentioned, neither by the victims, nor by the teachers. Each day’s anticipation of being named and shamed meant that I was very frightened, but at the same time strangely excited.

   Encouraged by my success I began to supplement my paper reserve with money, which had a more practical benefit. Most of the other children in my class brought a 1d. (one penny piece) to school for break-time (this was the 1950s, when there were 12 pennies in a shilling). One penny might not sound much today, but it was sufficient then to buy a fine break-time treat - a choice of a pink or white sugar mouse with a little string tail, Ovaltine or Horlicks tablets folded into a small cone made from paper from used arithmetic exercise books, a packet of lemonade powder eaten from a licked finger, or a small thin chocolate bar. I don’t know whether I didn’t have my own penny because my parents didn’t know about it, or couldn’t afford it. In any event it didn’t matter because as we stood beside our desks for morning prayers, our hands devoutly folded and eyes piously squeezed shut, I reached out and felt for the penny pieces nearest to me, put on the corner of their desks by their unsuspecting owners. With a nimble movement my hand found the coins and transferred them into the pocket of my gymslip. On a bumper day I managed to scoop two coins, careful not to let them clink together as they changed ownership. Astonishingly, none of my classmates ever mentioned the loss of their pennies, just as they didn’t appear to notice that their exercise books were showing signs of anorexia. If I’d had a penny to lose you can be pretty sure I would have raised quite a storm if it had disappeared. So each day some unfortunate child, or on a good day, two children, didn’t get a sugar mouse or similar treat. The Lord helps those who help themselves, and he certainly provided very nicely for me.

   Apart from paper and pennies I began to find small, interesting items in other children's desks. Like a jackdaw I pecked them up. My satchel was a repository of things that did not belong to me – hair grips, pencils, tiny ornaments. It was the mother-of-pearl rosary beads and Bible that led to my downfall. On an early-morning raid, I was enthralled to find these pretty items in another child’s desk. I slipped them into my satchel, so thrilled with this exceptional haul that I didn't even bother about harvesting any paper.

  That evening there was a knock at our front door, a rare event, and my mother came and said there was someone to see me. It was the previous owner of my swag, with her parents....

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