Another pair of glasses has surfaced – they’re hanging off the edge of the book I’ve just finished. Yes folks, my dear Dad has written a book of memoirs and it’s hot stuff indeed! Of course as more than half of the book is concerned with events that have happened during my lifetime, (and Dad discussed them with us while he was writing) I was not surprised at most of its contents but I was amazed at what a feat it was in terms of content and length. I do know that it took him more than a year to write.
He published it about six or nine months ago while I had my nose hard to the grindstone studying for my PGCE so although he sent me a copy at the time, it has lain unread on my book pile ever since. Now I have some time for such things as reading (this is my ninth book in about three weeks), I have read it over the last couple of days.
Although, as I said, I had heard most of its contents before, a couple of key things struck me that happened to him made a huge and lasting impact on my own life. The first of these was the complete lack of concern that my parents expressed when we were growing up about the fragmented and poor quality of our education. I’ve said a number of times before that I went to fourteen schools, of which twelve were primary schools. It has always seemed odd that my parents, who clearly care deeply about our wellbeing, just saw it as an inevitable fact of RAF life. Now I understand. My Dad probably just thought “fourteen, that’s nothing compared to the number I attended…” If our education was fragmented then his was shattered into a million pieces as he was shunted around between the care system and his dysfunctional father. It makes the education of us “scaley brats” seem positively tame.
His hopeless father also almost certainly impacted in a more positive way on my personal wellbeing. My parents were completely obsessed with home ownership when I was a teenager. At the time I put it down to the fact that we’d never owned a home until I was in my late teens due to living in RAF accommodation. Now I see that there was another key influence in that dream of and desire for home ownership that went far beyond the bit that I knew about. In the book, my Dad describes in graphic detail about how his inadequate father who never earned a bean would move the family into digs, run up a big rent bill, then he’d secure other digs and the family would be forced to do a “moonlight flit” to escape the landlord’s rent demands. At the new location, the same thing would happen and they were moved again and again like this. My Dad’s need for somewhere secure to call home had been drilled into his young brain at a tender age.
This was to make its mark on my life when I was in my early 20s and my parents were adamant that I shouldn’t waste money on rented accommodation, that I’d never regret striving to become a home owner myself. They encouraged me to move home and save like crazy for a place of my own. I did three jobs (my day job, four nights a week in a pub and a Saturday job) and saved every bean I had. Prices were rising rapidly and every time I thought I was nearly there I’d find they’d gone up again and I was adrift. Dad encouraged me to buy a flat that was barely above derelict (it had no bathroom, gas lights on the walls, holes in the roof, an Ascot heater for hot water in the kitchen and round pin sockets) and he spent weekend after weekend for six months putting in a bathroom, a kitchen, rewiring the whole place and putting in storage heaters because the flat didn’t have any gas. I was his navvy, his labourer and his moral support. It was one of the steepest learning curves I have ever been on, second only to my PGCE. We spent months stinking of woodworm fluid, bitterly cold and exhausted. It was the best thing I ever did. Dad was right, once you have a home, you can deal with life.
