Tag: family

The bombs went off all around him as he clung to the side of the hill not knowing whether this was the end.

This was my father, 28 years old, 1943, a commander of men on the Greek island of Leros during  World War Two. He’d been in the war since day one having signed up to the Royal Navy reserves in 1938.

Like so many, he saw what was coming.

But he never really saw what was coming, at least not for him.

Years of stress and trauma that would leave him shattered at the war’s end. Shattered, unsupported, abandoned by the establishment that lauded him, and left to suck it up. Unequipped to talk about it, not even daring to admit to himself there might be something wrong. No, he was a man, men did not do that, men took a deep breath and carried on, not uttering a word to anyone, never showing weakness.

Stride forth great warrior, and achieve, achieve, achieve.

He was a war hero. He received the DSC for incredible acts of bravery, saving the lives of so many at the risk of his own. Enrolled into the Greek Sacred Regiment, he was nicknamed as one of the ‘Vikings of the Aegean’ by the local Greek partisans.

Then he came home…

My father.

A wild character.

He married my mother in early 1949, and they had their first child, Geoff, born in December of that year, then came my sister Georgie in 1952, my brother Mike in 1953 and me, in 1959.

But he was wild, off the rails.

He was a business wizard, turning deals, making connections, partying, gambling, not paying his taxes; everyone’s friend, what a character, what a man.

Good old Frank.

Good old Frank. He made my mum’s life hell, oh the stories she told me… I had to ask her to stop.

Those years of childhood are misty to me, relying more on the stories of others, photos, and grainy home movies, movies and photos that make everything look so normal, a normal, well-to-do happy family.

I have little snapshots mind you: being bounced up and down on my father’s tummy, him smiling up at me; the feeling of my father’s rough, unshaven cheek when giving him a kiss;  him taking me to see his yacht, acquired through some complex gambling debt from his buddy Sir Max Aitkin, his war had moved him into a giddy other world; …and of my mother trying to strangle him with his necktie in the kitchen when I was about 5 years old…

Without knowing why, I was lost and confused, and scared.

The devil used to speak to me.

That is why I cut up the expensive silk curtains mum.

I confess, I became wild and reckless myself, yet when I look back, I don’t really remember, I only see the mask; the nice guy, the reliable, good old Dave the guy everybody likes.

What did everybody else see?

Who knows?

When my father died when I was 6 years old my world ended. He had told me, me and my sister, who was 7 years older than me, that he was going to kill himself. I did not know what he meant, what on earth can that mean.?

I remember sitting in his lap, him in the armchair by the front door, he was crying, crying with such depth and despair, and I could do nothing. I then see the front door open and him gone, and I never saw him again.

Did this really happen? I don’t know, but it is in me as clear as if it did, so something happened.

Many years later, more than thirty, I was sitting in a small cottage up the side of the mountain in a remote part of Co. Leitrim, Ireland where I was living and working,  reading ‘FAMILIES and how to SURVIVE Them’ by John Cleese and Dr Robin Skynner.  What I had just read I don’t remember, but what I do remember was that I was hit by a  realisation, as a bolt from the blue. The book fell from my hand to the floor, I was stunned as I said quietly, out loud, “Oh, my god, I killed my dad”.

My father died by suicide when I was 6 and I disappeared inside of myself. I became a quiet, withdrawn boy. I struggled at school. I was no trouble but I was not anything else either. My mother tried to bring me out of myself by signing me up to a child modelling agency, it was torture, I hated every minute of it, but I did what was expected of me. Anything to keep me safe. Then it emerged I was not doing well in my school work. It was an independent school and my mother was not willing to keep struggling with paying the fees if it was not going to get anywhere and she let me know that unless things improved I would be sent to the local state school.

This terrified me, so I turned things around and excelled.

Anything to survive. I got through. I went onto a Public School.

In the background were my brothers and sister, and as far as I was concerned I was one of them. I did not relate to boys of my own age, but more with them, it was them that I would like to hang around with.

Mike 6 years older, the Golden boy and my personal tormentor, Georgie, 7 years older, bright and intriguing with her cool friends, and then there was Geoff. 10 years older and in a band.

A band that was going places. On TV, on tour with Gilbert O’Sullivan and Led Zeppelin, it was a giddy world. I learned to drink young, 11, getting drunk for the first time at my brother Geoff’s 21^st birthday party. I met TV celebrities, even getting drunk at a BBC after show celebration dinner at a Chinese restaurant. What was I, 12, 13 , 14 maybe? Everyone thought it was funny!

I would go with my mother during the school holidays to Ibiza and have to hang out with her expat cronies, and they would find the drunk little teenager cute.

Geoff, though he was the one. He was the glory child, he was going places. He was the one who would try to buck me up, get me to grasp the nettle of life, but I was so afraid, and I was in awe of him.

And then everything fell apart. The band kicked him out, he tried to remake himself  but it all unravelled.

It was the Easter school holidays 1975. Mum was off to Ibiza again but I refused to go. I was 15 I would stay at home with my brothers. Then the phone call came, which I answered. Geoff was dead, suicide.

Again suicide.

This is where it ends for me, where my memory became erased. Blank.

I then spent years thinking I was okay.

Years of dangerous behaviour starting with drinking under age. I somehow kept afloat training to be a computer programmer, going from job to job, but the nice guy was off the rails. Driving like a mad man fuelled on alcohol, relishing the screams of the girls in the car. Riding motorbikes fast, high on Dodos and wine. Taking speed, mushrooms, Ganja, heroin even, and more alcohol; always alcohol.

I wove through this in one form or another for years and years, always being the lovely guy, always getting away with it, but I never saw myself. I never saw how I had come to hate my father, and then to hate his surrogate, Geoff, and how I was trying to kill them by trying every which way I could to kill them within me. To kill me.

These stories, these poems, these whatever’s that will appear here are what I promise are the raw truth as best as I can tell. It.

These are my stories. My stories of a boy trying to become a man, a good man, strong man.

Sure, I was always reliable, sincere, honest and trust worthy, these were all masks to help hide the rage, the lost warrior within me, the hapless hero throwing himself against the enemies guns.

I have started to wake up now, and that is another story in itself, which will appear here.

I invite you to stay with me as this story unfolds, in all its imperfections, and in no particular order, and with no particular moral or point to make. Just my exploration, my stories; make of it what you will. I hope through this I will learn. Learn who I was, who I am now, and who I am becoming.

So, let us begin.