Just to let you know!

Hi Everyone

I am just letting you all know that I have a major technical problem at the mo, my laptop died and I am trying to resolve it, until then my blog will not be updated, sorry about this, I will get it back up and running as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading, if you become a follower of my blog by clicking the link on the right hand side of the blog page, you will be notified when I post anything new.

Cheers
Tony xx

Our House.........

We arrived, I don’t know what time it was, still light anyway, and my duck needed to get out of its box. We had arrived at a semi detached house, with a pond in the front garden and steps with a railing up to the front door. It looked nice I thought OK, this is where I’m going to live so let’s get the duck out of its box and then I’ll check out my room. Well I’d forgotten ‘she’ was here, ‘she’ was my father’s new wife, and yes it was her from all those years ago, the woman he had the affair with. I was disappointed but I was here now so let’s just get on with it. I was led into the back garden and I opened the box for the duck, well it ran from the box and straight into the hedge and then through the hedge and off into the distance. Oh no, here we go, my father went straight into his rant and started shouting about the fact that he knew it was a bad idea having a duck and that it had nowhere to sleep and if we caught it, then how were we going to keep it in, shout, swear shout, swear. I didn’t think this was a good start and I was right ‘cause everything just got worse. We had to go over to the neighbour that my father didn’t get on well with and ask him if we could search his garden for the duck, he said he would help, we spent what seemed like ages looking for it, then we heard it quacking and homed in on that, then it just ran when I tried to get it and my father was shouting the duck was running I was getting scared of what he was going to do if he caught it, luckily I caught the duck and had it in my arms and was leaving the neighbours garden, when my father said put it back in its box until we know what to do with it. So back in the box it went and then into the garage to make sure it couldn’t escape again. Finally I went into the house, it was a nice 3 bed roomed place with a lounge and dining room and a kitchen extension. Hold on 3 bed rooms, where’s my room, hasn’t ‘she’ got 2 kids already. Yes ‘she’ did have 2 kids and this meant me and my sister would be sharing, me with my step brother and my sister with her step sister. Well that didn’t go down well with anyone; they obviously resented having us cuckoo’s in the nest, and I thought I was getting a room of my own, it turns out no one said I was getting a room of my own I just made that up in my head! So this wasn’t the big problem for now because granny was here too, so actually me, my sister and my step brother were going to be sharing while granny was visiting, for a week, oh god what a pile of sh*t. We were going to the beach tomorrow, so we had to be to bed early so we had food and went off to bed, well we couldn’t sleep and my new step brother, delighted in telling me that this was his room and I wasn’t allowed to touch anything and that he made the rules of the room and I needed to obey them, fucking great I thought I’m back at school, back at the travellers site and the ‘bigger boy’ is still in control of me. I’d given up thinking about the frying pan and the fire, I just thought, anywhere would be better than this, ANYWHERE!

We’re on a road to nowhere…..

This memory is short I’m afraid, maybe I’ve blocked it out or maybe I have merged all sorts of stuff together and it’s now a blur but this is what I can remember. A granny and a duck don’t mix, well I didn’t know that! She was not happy about the duck, she had made it clear when we arrived at her flat, I didn’t know this at the time, but she went on about it the whole 5 hour journey to Devon. “I said it was a smelly thing and it keeps shitting all the time, keep it away from me” this was difficult as we were in a camper van on our way down the A303. On and on about it (the duck) and me, my little sister and how unhappy she was. We had to stop every 50 miles so she could stretch her legs and “get away from the smell”, of the duck, or was it me she meant? Anyway my father was beginning to show his true colours, he would be calm and pleasant then when it wasn’t going his way, I think that was when he reverted to the child in front of his mother, and he would shout and swear too! Lovely I thought the idyll is fast approaching. 5 hours in a vehicle is like torture to a 9 and a half year old, when is it going to end, well it finally did, and we had arrived in Devon, now I know I am revealing the shit that has happened to me but one thing is true Devon is a beautiful place and I have a place in my heart for it still, rolling hills, amazing coastline, fresh air and sky forever, perfect, but when you arrive in a strangers house you don’t feel any of that.

Just making sure your keeping up......

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all your support, I hope you are following my story and are aware that I have gone back to the beginning, to set the scene of why I think I got fat in the first place, I will keep on posting and would appreciate any comments.

Love and Light
Tony x







 

There’s no one quite like grandma………

The site where I had lived for the last 10 months was in Romford Essex and now I was going to live in Devon, in Brixham, by the sea and all that country air. I was going to be able to swim in the sea and see cows and sheep and breathe good fresh air, but first because it was a long drive and because my father’s mother, my granny, lived in Stepney we would be stopping off at hers over night. Great I thought I can meet family see who they are and find out what their like. Well as it turns out I got the wrong end of the stick, we weren’t just popping in to see granny, she was coming with us, oh and my dad didn’t have a car, it was a camper van and we were going to all travel down to Devon together in it, Me my duck, my sister, our father and his mother. As we arrived at grannies in the afternoon, we would be staying the night and all going off in the morning. This sounded ok but there I go again putting a shine on it all! Well I was sat in grannies flat and eating a sandwich and drinking tea, old eastend tradition is to give the guests tea and sarnies, and I over heard her say, “well they aint sleeping in my bed ‘til they’ve had a fu*king wash or something, great I thought, running water, HOT running water, maybe even a bath, how brilliant. Then she appeared in the door and said your gonna have to have a bath before bed, yippee I thought, I was right a HOT bath, how lovely, wrong! The bath was run and I was told to go and get in it, so I did, to my surprise, and shock granny appeared at the door once I was in and said “your filthy, look at you, you’ll have to have a scrub”, and she went, I carried on enjoying the hot water, then she was back and she had brought a scrubbing brush, you know the one you do the floor with. I thought am I supposed to use that, well no ‘I’ wasn’t. My granny knelt by the side of the bath and instructed me to stand up, I felt reluctant to and stayed where I was sitting in the water, with it just covering my pride, and then it happened, dear sweet grey haired old granny, shouted “stand up I said”, I leapt to attention and she proceeded to grab the soap and rub it roughly into the brush, and I thought, she’s going to do that to me, and she did. Whilst she scrubbed me with the brush she started a rant that I remember to this day, “Living on a gypsy site, exactly what I’d expect from that bloody woman, look at you, you haven’t had a bath in weeks, you’ve probably got fleas, and you smell like shit”, I giggled a bit when she swore, then I realised she meant my mother was that bloody woman, and I thought hey don’t be rude about my mum, well if that was rude, then I was in for a bigger shock, she just kept on with the insults, but they were filled with her trade mark anger and bitterness, fucking scum this, useless tramp that, I did my usual thing of shutting down, and thinking play dead, stand still it will be over soon and you can, then I realised I couldn’t do my usual and run, I was stuck here and it was only going to get worse. The ordeal over I was just pleased to be in the bed and away from her and now my dad, he hadn’t stopped her saying the things she said, we were in an old council flat in the eastend of London, he must have heard what she had said, she wasn’t trying to keep her voice or her thoughts to herself, fu*king great out of the frying pan, into hell, now sleeping with the devil, where the fuck is the fire, it would’ve still been a blessing.

The long Goodbye………

I think I stayed at the caravan site for about 10 months in total, leaving may have been the biggest mistake of my life, I will never know, staying for me was not an option, “he” was still in my mother’s life and in fact would be for a very long time, and I hated living in that “van”, it was not home and still to this day I think 1 week in a caravan is enough for anyone. Anyway events were taken out of my control, my father had found out where we had been taken and were living, he made contact and we, his children were given his new address, so out of spite for “him” I wrote to my father as did my younger sister, we even got a reply. My father read all the time so I guess he had a way with words, well he painted a picture of an idyllic life where he was, with the sea and the country and his dogs and fish pond and it all sounded cosy and nice, later I would learn that words can paint a picture that reality can shatter.

This part is hard to remember, I don’t know why, I have tried to rethink it so many times, but it is still a confused mesh of order and disorder. So what I am going to write is what I believe happened in what order I recall it, I know my sisters have different versions but the reality is, the outcome is the same.

After the letter from my father the urge to leave the site, to go and live the idyll in Devon, that was where he had moved to, was immense. After some discussion and argument my younger sister and I decided that we did not want to stay at the site anymore. Now I have some recollection that my father had threatened my mother that he would get the authorities involved, telling them that we had not been to school and that he knew of her whereabouts, so the council could be informed for any back rent of the house we had run away from, that she would be advised that allowing us to move to Devon with him would be the best option for all.

So it was agreed that my younger sister and I would be collected by our father on a certain day in the summer of 1976 and go and live with him for evermore. I think I was relieved and excited and began to pack and wish the day would arrive sooner, this would not be the wish I would wish for me now, for so many reasons, as I have said leaving the site was a big mistake. I loved my mother and wanted to be with her always but the choices she made meant that I couldn’t be with her any longer, so leaving was what I needed to do, I would miss my other sisters but they could come and visit us whenever they wanted, this was part of the “deal”.

The day arrived and by now the plot we were on was overrun with animals, dogs and cats and ducks and chickens, well I was the proud owner of 2 ducks and they were coming with me, a few nights before us leaving, in a fit of drunken rage “he” had killed one of my ducks because it had shat on him when he picked it up and freaked it out, I used to feel like shitting myself when “he” was in a drunken state. So I was adamant that I was taking my duck with me, my father had other ideas and said there was no room in the car and that it was a long drive and blah and blah and blah, well I said either I go with a duck or I stay with a duck, I got my way, however both me and the duck didn’t live the life we hoped in the idyll of Devon.

Enola Gay………

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I am gay, I have always been gay, it’s just that the body, mind and soul don’t tell you that’s what you are, you have to figure it out and anyway, I was nine I wasn’t really thinking about sex or sexuality then, but the “bigger boys” were and they could tell, and they told me often “queer” is a name I have been called more times than I can remember, to be honest if someone shouted out “QUEER” I turned round, habit I guess, not for one minute that I wanted the attention of the person shouting it out, it was reflex or fear flex! If the word “queer” was shouted I was going to get punched or I needed to get running, either way I had to respond to it! Forest Gump ran because he wanted to, I ran cause I had to. Being corned for the umpteenth time is what I was used to so, when I was I played dead, you know stand there let them get it over with, then when the opportunity came, RUN, AGAIN! During this time, of living in hell, I met a boy, he lived on the caravan site too, he wasn’t much bigger than me and he steered clear of the “bigger boys”, so we gravitated together, his tactic for “staying alive”, was to get up before the others (bigger boys), leave the site and not return until it was nearly dark, so he and I did this most days. Back then in the 70’s you had to keep out of sight of the school truancy officer, so we left the site early, 8:00am and walked around doing nothing being invisible. What we didn’t have was money to alleviate the boredom, so we watched what the others did and they all collected “scrap”, so what is scrap, well it’s anything you can collect that once you have it, you take along to a “dealer” who will give you money for it, so we wanted “scrap”. The way to get scrap is to get yourself a pram; you know the old type four big wheels and a “cot” type body to fill with baby and blankets, well we got one of these, to be honest I think he got it and it just became ours, we had the pram and we would walk the streets with a purpose, the purpose was to find “scrap” to take to the dealer. Now two boys not at school and trying to keep out of sight but still find “treasure/scrap”, was a problem because, people don’t just give you scrap, you have to find it, but where do you look? Well suffice it to say “scrap” isn’t always how the owner of the “scrap” sees it, so we would take whatever from whoever we could as long as we thought we could sell it. A dealer buys most things, but metal was the prize, copper and brass was the biggest prize, and copper nor brass grow on trees, so you have to know where to get it from, and the boy, his name does escape me, but he knew where to get it. Firstly plumbers refitting a kitchen had copper and brass, but they knew its value too, so we would offer to help clear up at jobs, all the while watching where the copper and brass was being kept, then when the time was right, and I’m not condoning this behaviour now, we would steal whatever we could and run, sometimes the brand new copper for the plumbing would finds its way into our pram.