By way of documenting what has been my life thus far, I have of late been thinking more than a little deeply about some of those critical moments in our lives - in retrospect, naturally, since we seldom see them as critical at the time - when we make decisions that go-on to become far more crucial and potentially far-reaching than we realise. For those moments that can go-on to almost seal our fate, if we allow them to, we seem to pay nowhere close to the attention that they warrant - we are young, of course, and with youth comes the inexperience of not having been on the planet quite long enough yet.
A lame excuse if ever I've made one, since 'being young' hardly held me back from anything I ever did, truth be known, once I was 'old enough', which wasn't all that old at all, really.
More on that another time.
I should mention that I feel, immediately, quite aside from a little hopping around, to and fro, that this particular blogging effort of mine is highly unlikely to be hugely amusing, although I shall do my level best to make it so - the topic and it's very nature, in it's essence, is a factual one, and whilst not so very many humerous things happened to me during my early youth, ie zero to, say, 14, the time frame I will attempt to cover in part, well, it was hardly Dullsville.
Let's see how it all goes - at any rate, it will be as accurate as I remember it to be, and no poetic license will be taken, I promise, purely to Guild the Lily to make things anecdotally funny and/or interesting in any artificial manner - of course, it would have been far easier for me to simply say "It was what it was".
So going back to these life decisions we make, and my first few of significance and some consequence..........I think I knew full-well the outcome, even then, of the decisions I made, and I could go-on to blame all manner of things and/or people as to why I made the choices, but in the end, it's always down to us, even at the tender age of 15 or at the even more tender age of 10, as we shall see.
We know pretty much what awaits us, at least in some abstract way, just as my own 15 year old daughter knows the consequences of working below her potential, which is immense, provided that she has the same level of belief in herself that I have in her - just in case, though, I shall keep on telling her, lest she is going through one of her selective deafness phases, which thankfully only ever happen on days that have a 'Y' in them.
No, it's not that we don't know we are so completely wrong, that the choices we make and the way we elect to prepare ourselves and our lives will very much influence so many things...........we just don't like to think about that side of things, since it detracts from the fun we're having, whatever that might be at the time, but which is almost always nothing of any real importance or magnitude at all.
Or, if you prefer, and in brief, we do tend to fuck around, metaphorically, much too much, and always at the expense of the important stuff until we realise, usually a little late in the day, that the clock is indeed ticking, quite fast now and rather loudly in our shell-like ear.
No one told us when to run - have we missed the starting gun?
And as for Fun.....was it Fun? - Well, some of it is way more than fun, or was for 'lil' old me in very large doses, but that's for another extract, or we'll be here all day and then some.
Lets start at the very beginning - A Very Good Place To Start
I was raised by my Grandmother after being just a few days old.
My mother was a tender (no, hardy tender.......let's just say 'young')16 years old, and not in any way, shape or form, was she capable of raising a baby, on so many levels - on any and all levels. She had fallen pregnant to a US pilot, stationed in my home town, as so many US servicemen were, back then in the 50's. He was, and still is, a man I know very little about, save the few details as mentioned and those that now follow. He truly did want to marry my birth mother, to do the right thing, and he did love her very deeply, asking her, nay begging her to return with him as his bride to America. She flatly declined - clearly grossly insufficient bubble gum, tootsie rolls, chocolate and nylon stockings had been offered-up as the dowry, and he was a good 10 years older than she, which may not seem like a lot or any big-deal, but at her age, and back then, in the mid 1950's, of course, it really was. (It was just as big a deal for a 15 year old young woman to be 'with child', and when it was 'my time to come-out', my birth mother was obliged to have her baby at a place that was always referred to simply as 'The Home', a small hospital/birthing unit way out in the countryside - one went there with a big tummy and came back with a baby, and that's all anyone ever needed to know)
He (my Father) finally had to return to the USA, and she remained there in the East Midlands of England, or it may have been a very different BoxxyMary talking to you now. As it was, and as it still is, I have not one clue as to who he is, or was, having never seen even as much as a photograph (I was told none were ever taken......sif!) and later, by Grandma, that 'it was all done in the name of 'protecting' me' and, that no one knew anything....and in any event, 'why was I concerned' and so on it went, this sweeping of all and any information under the carpet so completely. I really wasn't so interested as much as simply curious - I never, ever really pushed further for any information, wasn't ever truly bothered, always, at that time, seeing myself as fortunate enough to have love all around me in more than sufficient quantities - it really didn't seem to matter.
Now, of course, as has been the case for quite some time, even if it ever did matter one fine day, there's not a soul left alive that I could ever ask.
My partners over the many years have been far more interested in this than I ever have been, so much more curious than I to know what he was like, if he was still alive etc........perhaps it's only now that the tiniest spark of interest jumps in and out of mind occasionally, but it is hardly the case where it ever does. It was only ever an issue at school sometimes - well, lots of times - kids can be such cruel bastards. I can't recall anyone else, back then, in Primary School especially, who didn't have the full complement of parents, which made me stick out like the proverbials. Endless teasings of 'so what did you say your Daddy does' and similar made things a little difficult at times, to the point, occasionally, where I would lash out at the offender. There was a very brief period, at around age 11yrs, I think, where I was very angry at the world, asking lots of questions and declaring how very unfair it all was that I only had a Grandmother whilst everyone else had a Mum and a Dad. Once I setled down from the foolishness & began to look around me, I saw my peers, all of whom had Mothers and Fathers, and many who had major issues with same, often being beaten or worse - at the very least, they weren't at all happy, or always seemed much less happy than I. My phase of being angry didn't last very long at all, and I refocussed, seeing abundantly clearly how incredibly lucky I was to be as surrounded by love, and slowly just beginning to see just how special my Grandma really was, giving and sacrificing all things so that I could have a life. There was never a lot of money, not at any time, but I went without very little and wanted for nought. No one could have had more love than I, and once I could see this, could focus upon it, all of the anger and bitterness left me and has never returned.
I could quite easily atribute that the ways that some parts of my life have gone could well have been influenced by lack of parents - in many ways, it would be wrong to do so, and likely incorrect, but that I have been married so many times, and have found life to be so unsettled for me so often.....it's very hard to say with any absolute certainty that there are or aren't any root causes there - there would have to be some, I feel sure, but I cannot say there was any lack of love - there has never been any lack of love at any time throughout my life, but there was none evident during my early childhood - I was loved to bits, and so I feel I can almost put to bed entirely any notion of blame - I have made my own beds and have had to lay in them, as is only right and proper.
Of course, none of this ever really stops me wondering about it all, trying desperately to seek some sort of Holy Grail that will go-on to explain why my life has taken the twists and turns that it has - nowadays, though, I refuse to beat myself up about it quite so much (I use other stuff instead!) - but seriously, I really don't have that luxury any more, having far more things that life has thrown my way that I need deal with....Such Is Life.
And now, after our short intermission and digression :
As for my birth mother, and as I was to go-on in my own life to 'mirror', almost, she was having far too much fun to trouble herself with the likes of education, let alone marriage to a US pilot. She certainly was in no state of mind, nor emotionally able to handle the complexities and demands of a newborn baby and, really, I've never really blamed her for this (certainly, through my work as used to be, young mothers are something I have dealt with time and again,
Most all of them are simply not ready emotionally, and it's just a case of them being physically able to reproduce having arrived quite some way ahead of their abilities to properly cope with a child, still being a child themselves)
No, with my 'mother' - it was simply who she was - she enjoyed a good time, lots of boyfriends and a little later, enjoyed far more of the good life than was good for her, by continuing the high life, sitting on bar stools in her favourite pubs and bars, getting drunk.
I can't say we ever bonded, though she did try, more through those feelings of obligation we can have than anything, once I was around 7 or 8 yrs old, by having me over to cook me a roast dinner on a Saturday, giving me a little pocket money and so-on - later, I would go-on to despise the woman that she was, though not through any part of her abandoning me, but for being a drunk and an embarrassment to me. My Grandma was always protective of me, and would always remind me that she (my Grandmother) was my mother, and that was certainly the case - my birth mother was what one would refer to as the 'Black Sheep' of the family, I guess one might say, and it was for this, for who she was, that I distanced myself from her.
I couldn't ever feel love for her, no big surprise, really, since I didn't know her - I was here in Sydney, Australia, when she finally died, in the UK, at only 54 years of age, and not at all pleasantly, of cervical cancer, and after never having had what could remotely be called a 'good life' for more than a fleeting moment - one riddled with chronic back pain and so much suffering, I felt sorrow only for her and the suffering that she had endured.........deep compassion, but no more compassion than anyone else that has ever been in my care over the years in similar circumstances.
It didn't feel at all wrong - there was no guilt and there still isn't.
In contrast, when I received news that my Grandmother had finally passed away, no matter that it was expected, I cried more deeply than I've ever cried, weeping uncontrollably - I still do - more at what was never said........I did, though, fly her over here twice, once to Sydney and again to Townsville, and made a point of telling her what she had meant to me most clearly, but there is always the deep lamentable feelings of not having said enough........something so many people go-on to experience and something that everyone can learn from.
Anything & Everything can all be taken from us in a Heartbeat, and we must shower those we love with Love, always, always, Always.
Back again now :
When I was born, my Grandmother stepped-in very swiftly, after one day, with me only days old, my birth mother had become involved in a decent session on the Gin, followed by her going-on to breast feed me a little too soon afterwards - my Grandma later would recount often to me that I slept very deeply for almost 2 days, without waking for feeds or anything, clearly as pissed as a fart for the very first time, yet unable to celebrate and enjoy it, being so young, immature and all.
My Grandmother became my Mum, in all and every way, in an act of pure love the true depths of which I was not able to fully understand or truly appreciate until much later in my life, as aforementioned. Mum was what I always called her, and thought of her as, always. It was pure good fortune for me to have had so much love - I knew then, and know even more now that she's gone, just how very deeply I was loved, more than she ever loved her own children.........I was her favourite, and she loved me this way forever and always, until she breathed her last.
Try as she might, and she did try as best she could, when it came to my education, my poor Grandmother couldn't get me to see the sense of staying-on at school. I was a reasonably smart kid, but to state that I didn't really know it well enough then would be a huge understatement.
I would even go-on and get the 'Golden Ticket', winning a scholarship passage through to what was then, a 'new' kind of school that had opened, one that could offer far greater things than the Secondary Modern School I was at - an all-singing, all-dancing 'Comprehensive' school was it's name. There were only 4 of us chosen from the entire school, for this special 2nd chance at getting a better foothold in life......those precious few of us that had missed the 1st boat, that had been wrongly 'streamed' following the dreadful 'Eleven-Plus' exam that kids sat in their final year at Primary School. (this I.Q.-based form of measurement was thought to be, at the time, the very best way of determining how to stream children - those smarter and capable enough of passing the exam would go-on to one of the city's 2 Grammar Schools, and all others to their choice of Secondary Modern School - it has since been proven to be a dreadful example, amongst others, of sorting good and able from less-good/less capable, but back then, streaming of children was de rigeur, or the dog's bollocks, should you prefer)
Here's just how smart I was at age 11, though, as I sat in the examination room sitting my own Eleven Plus examination, determining my own future with great accuracy. I could answer almost all of the questions, and easily, but doing so would thwart my cunning plan - in brief, all of my friends were 3-4 years older than I - ever since being 7 or 8 years old, this was the way of things. It was where I felt at my most comfortable, amongst people I could relate to properly, and would be something that continued on throughout my teens. I was what one might call 'very emotionally mature for my age' or whatever else one might call such a state of affairs.
All of my then freiends were at a certain school - a Secondary Modern School - and naturally, I wanted to be there with them, no matter that they were all at least 3 school years ahead of me and would go-on to leave almost as soon as I arrived - this part seemed to elude my thinking, somehow........I think you know what's coming
Yes, I really did intentionally fluff my Eleven Plus, and then some, answering a good 30% or more of the questions intentionally wrongly, and omitting to answer entirely plenty of the others, making sure my plan would work perfectly - I would fail my Eleven Plus - who wanted all that extra homework, better & more qualified teachers......what kind of tool wanted to go-on to be a fucking Doctor, Lawyer of Architect anyway, earning huge sums of money and all that comes with that?
Not I, obviously.
And so........Success!!!
It had worked a treat, my cunning plan, and that was that, at least for the moment.
It wouldn't be the last time I used my skills and cunning, as quite clearly, my being one of the 4 chosen from the entire school of over 1000 pupils still didn't get through to me that this offer of a lifetime, this chance to amend the earlier mistake I had made at age 11 by being given a place at the new school was something I should grasp with all 4 limbs, my teeth, my dick and anything else I could reach-out and grab.
It would have given me a bagful of A Levels and a place at University - almost certainly into Medicine, and I won't go into how many times I kick my own arse, and have kicked it over the years, as to just where I might have gone, how high I could have flown had I only done the clever things.
Oh yes, I was smart alright.
Hindsight is always such a wonderful thing, though - without doubt, I was monumentally stupid, for a smart young bloke, that is, and not taking this most special of opportunities to go to the all-new school, I left at 15 years old - and left with nothing at all in my pocket by way of papers, CSE Certificates as they would have been at the Secondary Modern joint....O Levels and A Levels as they would (and should!!!) have been at the other one - a much more powerful tool to weild.
I had absolutely blot-all in my pocket as I proudly walked out of school and waved goodbye to it for the very last time.
Like one of my older friends, I wanted to be a Bricklayer - something that still astounds me to this day, but that's what I thought I wanted to do with my life, tender 15 yr old that I was.
It would, as I saw things, allow me to pursue, much more ably, my weekend pastime of drinking lots of beer down at the pub, something we did back then whenever possible. Now, as I look back, the landlords of the 2 or 3 pubs we used all knew that I was a few years under-age, but since we were always well behaved in the Loungerooms, Bars or The 'Snug'-Rooms of said pubs, I was always served and became an accepted local. Now, a working man, I could pay my own way, too, and not be as dependant upon my older peers with an income, who would always shout me most of my drinks from kindness and friendship beforehand. I could now have as many pints of Bitter, Brown Ale or Brown and Mild Ale mix as I wanted, which was usually about 8 or 9 pints per session back then.
My pocket money of $2/week hadn't been able to buy too much beer, although it did buy a surprising amount, still - but now, with my first wage of a whole $4/week, I could even have a bag of chips and a few games on the fruit machine/one-armed bandit, too, and still enough for fish, chips and peas on the way home.
It enabled many a very full weekend down the pub, and this all seemed so idyllic at the time - this was really living.
I was now an apprentice, training to become a Bricklayer over 3 years, and almost completed 2 of those years before the bitterly cold days, and my smashing my fingers with the Brick Hammer or squashing a pinky between 2 breeze/besser blocks once too often began to make me see a little sense.
I was cut-out for better things than building.
Had I remained, even, I feel sure that once again great fortune would have made me a pretty damned good builder, since I was placed alongside the construction company's very best Master Builder, who we shall call Harry, but only since that was his name.
Harry could build anything - his workmanship could be seen all around the city - an amazing man, close to retirement (and soon thereafter, sadly, to develop advanced lung cancer) who cared for me and taught me all he knew. He was devastated that I wanted to throw it all away, and for some weeks afterwards, wouldn't talk to me - later, of course, I could understand that he really had given all of his skills and time to me, only for me to fuck-off - rubbing salt into wounds and showing great ingratitude.......I would have been much more angry in his place.
It was now time to move-on - my Grandma was beginning to get just a little bit tired, anyway, of finding so many pairs of panties inside my lunch box when I arrived home, most days, which the guys on-site had carefully put there towards shifts-end. This, along with hammering several 6 inch nails inside and through the soles of my steel toe-capped boots, into the tea hut floor.....well, they were a fun-loving bunch, bless 'em and this was like an ongoing initiation, and really all pretty harmless - Harry did get the shits one day, though, after it had taken me almost half an hour to prise the nails out of my inner boot soles, making me very late on the job.
The boot nailing stopped henceforth, but the panties continued - some of them were really rather classy, too, always as frilly and colourful as could be found....I never did ask about their origins.
There I was, still short of 17, and now bound for one of the city's largest factories, a hydraulic brake manufacturer, initially as a drilling machinist, on 'piece-work', where there was the potential to earn 100 pounds per week if one really went crazy-dangerous, and after just a few months, when my 'talents' were discovered, over to the staff side proper, as a wages clerk, where the money was just as handsome but now I was salaried and the fingernails so much cleaner.....I had my own office, my own calculator, pretty girls calling in for coffee and a chat, and things were really looking-up, at least for a while.
Now, at 17, I rekindled thoughts of the thing I had always really wanted to do, yet had kept it hidden inside, even from myself, for the most part - I now wanted to actively pursue what had always been a fascination to me - Medicine - and I wanted to care for people who were too sick to care for themselves.......I wanted to become a Nurse.
It was only now that my folly of leaving school so stpidly early became so glaringly obvious, and it would go-on to be a full 4 years before I would be able to realise my dreams.......years filled with All Kinds of Everything.
So, if you're still there.............well, there really is so much more to follow, hopefully things of much more interest and fascination.
It'll be worth hanging around and waiting for, I promise - you'll gasp, you'll sigh, you'll laugh and you'll cry.
You might even pay the gas bill :)
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