You can now Pre order my sequel to love of Christopher Out on Amazon on kindle 7 January and the book 11 January RETURN FROM THE ABYSS The hand that rocked the cradle My father was only small and slim with short black hair. He was handsome but he had dark secrets. He loved his drink and gambling and he was a bad loser. I used to dread him coming home after he had had a drink and been gambling as he used to take his losses out on me and my mother. I suffered many a time with his anger and wrath and had the scars and bruises to prove it. I remember my father being in and out of my life when I was a young child. My mother used to tell me that my dad was working away. I didnt find out until I was much older that his absences were because he was in and out of prison. When he was in my life I suffered with his cruelty and his constant bullying. This carried on right through my school days. I couldn’t count the number of times I went to school with bruises and cried with my head on my school desk. Why he bullied me so much I will never understand. I wasnt allowed to play with friends like normal children. I was always locked up in my room. I lost count of the number of times I sneaked out of my box-room window to meet up with my pals. When I was allowed out, I was constantly getting in to trouble with the local Bobbies. At the top of my road in Highfield, which was an estate in Farnworth, there used to be a row of police houses. One local Bobbie there was infamous. His name was Sergeant Swann and he later became a thorn in my side. Anyway, back to the story. When I was four years old I remember sitting on the table in the kitchen. I was just playing with my mother as young children do, when my father walked in. For whatever reason, I still do not know until this day, he punched me on the nose. The force was so great that my head hit the back of the wall and blood was pouring out of my nose. I will never forget the look on my father’s face; it was pure hatred. I remember crying and my mother’s look of fear still haunts me to this very day. This was the first punch and many more followed over the years. It only stopped when I was sixteen and I had had enough of his constant beatings. I faced up to him and gave him a good hiding. He never touched me or my mother again after that. I came into the world in Withington hospital which was in Didsbury, Manchester. When I was nearly two years old we moved to Lee Street in an old mill town called Farnworth; part of the borough of Bolton. Lee Street was your typical cobbled street with pre-war houses with outside toilets in the back yards. I very rarely visited the toilet after six oclock in the evening as I was too scared to go out. There was no lighting and I was afraid of the dark. So my younger brother’s potty came in very useful at the time. The house we lived in was a three up and two down. It was a typical terrace house of the time. My bedroom was quite large. There were three small beds for me and my two brothers. They were Derek who was seven years older than me and Mark my younger brother. The wallpaper was quite plain with a flowered pattern and we had cream curtains. The floor covering was just a plain brown carpet and was very thin. There wasnt much of a view out of the window as there was a large empty factory building facing us in the back street. Me and my brothers used to play there most days. In my sisters’ room which was a bit smaller; there were two beds, one each for my sisters Diane and Pat. The girls’ room was much better decorated than mine. It had pink wallpaper with flowers on and a nice cream carpet with pink hanging curtains on the window. It was sparsely furnished with a wardrobe and bedside cabinets which we all shared. My mum and dads bedroom was quite pleasant; she had cream flowered, patterned wallpaper with rich cream hanging curtains. There were a few pictures on the walls and a nice beige carpet. There was a small kitchen in the house with a table and chairs a few cupboards. There was also a small pantry where my mother used to store the food. The front room had a small couch and two chairs, a brown carpet with a small white rug; a glass cabinet in the corner and a small table with a black and white television. My older sister Denise lived with my grandma as the house was too small and she only came to live with us when we moved to another house in Highfield in 1966. Like a said, I very rarely saw my father in the early days which was a blessing for me so I could play out and have fun like normal children. At that time in the early sixties in Lee Street you never saw much crime, so people felt safe and could leave their front doors open. Most of the people in the street were elderly and were very friendly and everybody knew each other. Every day you saw the elderly polishing their front steps and mopping in front of their houses. They would shout to each other across the cobbled street asking if they would like a cup of tea, a biscuit and a chat. Many times I remembered a certain lady called fat Hilda. She was elderly and must have been twenty five stone. She was forever knocking on the front door asking if she could borrow a few tea bags and a couple of spoons of sugar. It was the norm in those days. We all lived in impoverished times but were happy nevertheless. Every Wednesday the rag and bone man used to come round on his horse and cart and you could hear him in the street shouting, “rags and bones,” at the top of his voice. My mother then used to go out and look through the clothes he had on his cart and if she saw anything she liked and thought it fitted any of us, she then used to barter with him and buy the item. This used to be a regular thing every week with my mum. She still says to this day that we were always smartly dressed, which always made me chuckle. In those days if anybody in the street had children and they grew out of their clothes they would be passed on to nearby households who had younger children and put to good use. It was around 1964 when I started to see more of my father. It was happy times as he seemed to be a changed man. It was then that my younger brother Stephen was born. The school I attended was in a wooden hut. It had only two classes and they were separated by a wooden wall. In 1966, the year we won the World Cup, it was time to move as the house we were in was in a poor state. So we moved to Derwent Road in Highfield which was another part of Farnworth and a new chapter began.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 09:37:10 +0000