My dad died on Halloween and he was cremated on Bonfire
Night. I didn’t fully appreciate the
irony at the time as I was only six and I could barely read and write. In fact, at the very moment he was having his
third and fatal heart attack I was at school learning how to add up.
It was 1974. We lived
in a corner shop in Garforth near Leeds. I didn’t notice when I got home from school
that the shop was closed. I often find
it difficult to trust people and when I got in that day there were lots of
people there and they were all smiling and happy looking as if me walking in
was the greatest day of their lives. My
mum asked me to go upstairs with her.
This gets better I thought, a present of some kind. But no.
My dad was dead and I would be watching the Six Million Dollar Man on my
own tonight. We’d only just got a colour
telly. What a waste! I’d always enjoyed Bonfire Night but the day
of the funeral I wasn’t really in the mood.
I could see the cricket club bonfire out of my bedroom window, but I didn’t
go.
For a long time I cried into my baked beans at mealtimes and
didn’t play out. Belinda Smith (my
favourite girl when I was six) had seen my dad’s death in the paper. He was 40 she reminded me during story
time. It seemed old then, but that’s younger
than I am now.
After we sold the shop we had to live in a caravan for 5
months as our new council house was being modernised. My brother Phil was in terry nappies so
laundry was a pain and he didn’t help matters much by drinking disinfectant out
of pop bottle one day. But it was okay
because they sobered him up with milk and gave him a cardboard hat to be sick
in.
We lived next door to some dodgy families and I made loads
of dinosaurs out of egg boxes and bits of fake fur and other crap which they
store in boxes at primary school and someone broke into our caravan and tore
them all up.
It was easy enough to do because you could get a child’s
hand inside our letter box and open the caravan door from the inside.
We managed to run a black and white telly off a car battery
but as the battery ran down the picture got smaller until it disappeared. There was nothing on in those days anyway.
For our first Christmas as a one parent family two of my dad’s
sisters Aunties Dot and Joan stepped in at first to look after us. We went to Dot’s for Christmas. It was a strange transaction. Being taken to Sheffield and given about 20
Tonka Toys each for Christmas. I think
the whole extended family had had a whip round. To a child’s mind it seemed to
be a case of ‘Ere you go, sorry about your dad, here’s a shitload of
indestructible metal toys’. We got 2 of
everything.
After 5 months in the caravan we got a council house. We still lived near the dodgy families but
now they had houses and so did we, and our doors now had locks that you needed
a key for.
And even if they had been able to break in, we didn’t have toys
made out of egg boxes and bits of fake fur anymore. We had masses of Tonka Toys that we could
smash the skirting boards to bits with as my mum soon discovered to her
cost. And they did not.
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