My own earliest memory is of sunny afternoon in a garden with other children, boys and girls, possibly relatives but as we called everyone Aunty or Uncle I can't be sure whether the Uncles laps I sat on were real Uncles or their children real cousins. We were alll about three and in our trunks in a paddling pool but only I wore hand-knitted woollen ones which itched like mad when dry and hung down to my ankles when wet; the Devil's own design.
Although you might think that a three year old would be unaware of pecking orders, social correctness and disdain, as a man I remember the deep psychological wounds that pressed in upon me that day. I still recall as clearly as if it was only yesterday the silence that greeted me as I stepped out the pool with my water -laden crotch dragging on the ground, apparently caused by me being hung like a donkey!
Little boys and girls are aware of the differences between the sexes even at that age and whilst the boys collapsed squealing with contempt the girls stared, up then down then up and down again and then fainted. Their mothers, gagging, ran to rescue them. Sally carried on talking at the mothers, sublimely unaware that anything was wrong.
My world collapsed down on me. The birds stopped singing and the sun stopped shining. I swore that I would one day kill her. Because of that day I have never learnt to swim and I never appear in public in shorts or trunks.
Never, never do this to your small sons.
So where did my mother come from? Why couldn't she be like other children's mothers; kind and funny and compassionate; the mother that every child deserves? Why couldn't she cook or at least cook without burning everything to cinders or have a meal ready on time? Why did she drive my father to distraction day after day?
Well she was born in 1918, one of two children, to a hard working mother who ran a haberdashery and carpet shop and market stall in Queen's Road, West Ham, and a lazy, philandering father who terrified the young female shop assistants by threatening to sack them if they dared to let out so much as a squeak whilst he interfered with them from his chosen perch, lying on a shelf under the shop counter as they served customers!
I never knew the old sod beyond a fleeting glimpse on a visit from his new home and mistress to where he'd moved after squandering my grandmother's money and then deserting her after the second world war.
A handsome man you might think; with a rakish grin and a Clarke Gableish moustache? Oh no! I have a photo of him, published in a history of the East End. A little man sat in a hall with a tin hat on, probably five foot six tall and eight stone.
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| Grandpa Lothario. Front row Second from the right ! |
My bloodline. I never stood a chance really
. His son, my uncle Sidney was a brilliant atomic scientist who developed the process of irradiation that fresh fruit is bombarded with to preserve it and a successful womaniser by all accounts, with several marriages and lovers but who was born with a monstrously deformed chest which makes me sick to think of. The sternum was pushed back to within an inch of his spine, forcing his heart onto the wrong side, upending it in the process which wasn't discovered until he joined the army and had a medical examination. He used to make us clench our fists and see how far we could sink them into the cave!
Ah! That explains my early fear of caves!
I don't know how any woman could give herself to him! It seems that he expected every woman to succumb to his charms and this included my new young wife who meeting him for the first time outside my mother's house as our cars arrived together bent forward for a polite greeting peck, all of which displays of affection she hates and dismisses as middle-class crap, only to reel back in horror as Sidney thrust his tongue deep into her mouth!
I should have knifed him on the spot but in those days Shirley was concilatory and held me back saying that she thought she might have imagined it and didn't want to cause a fuss in my parents' house!
Absolutely seething with indignation I challenged my mother to say something to him but she dismissed my pleas with, "Oh darling, he does it to all women! He even does it to me!"
God I wish I'd been born with a spine!
If any film makers are reading this and think that there could be a great film made of that man's life, could I play my grandfather in the shop with Pippa Middleton and Cheryl Cole as the shop assistants?
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