Dumped

It may have felt like it at the time but Maurice was not a permanent fixture in our house. He came, he went, and occasionally he would stay the night during his 'went' periods because that's the kind of soft touch my Mother was when it came to him, but there were extended periods when he wasn't around. During these times my Mother would even pay lip service to the notion that she and he were done by getting together with other men.

One such 'filler' relationship actually managed to progress to the point of us almost moving in to the guy's house. It was never made official, and we never gave up our own house, but at one point we spent a good few weeks staying with him without setting foot in our own home.

Now, on the one hand, this could be seen as a bad thing, because moving in with him would have meant leaving behind our house on The World's Friendliest Street; a place that I was genuinely happy. None of the shit from my life prior to moving there had gone away, my Mother had not suddenly morphed into Ma Walton and Maurice was probably an even worse Father figure than my own waste of space Dad, but none of that seemed to matter all that much, because I loved living in that place. How would I cope with leaving that behind?

But on the other hand, moving in with him would have meant that we could almost, almost, convince ourselves that Maurice was finally no longer a factor in our lives.

In the end I made my decision on how I felt about the whole thing on the fact that he lived further away from our school. Which meant getting up earlier and walking further. Uphill! The indignity!

Of course, all the worrying and soul searching would eventually come to naught, because in a scenario all too common, we came back from school one day to be told that we were going home. The relationship, which had seemed perfectly fine that morning, was over. Oh, and Maurice was there to help us move our stuff. Now there's a surprise.

I felt sorry for the guy, to be honest with you, as we all trooped out of his house and he said his forlorn goodbyes to each of us individually. I mean aside from the, admittedly pretty major, character flaw of actually seeming to think something of my Mother, he had seemed like a fairly decent chap. Certainly in the weeks we spent in his house he had managed to restrain himself from any fits of ultra violence, so he had that going for him. He knew the situation with my Mother and Maurice going in though, so I suppose you could say he brought it on himself.

So anyway; we trooped off up the horrible big bank that took us home and upon arrival we quickly settled into our old routines. Maurice's 'helping with the bags' shockingly turned into him staying the night, which in a mindblowing twist that I certainly never saw coming, turned into him living with us. Fair play to him though, he made an effort. It must have been, oh, at least a week before his fists started flying.

In truth, I was fairly content with the way things turned out. I was back in the house I loved, surrounded by the neighbours I adored. None of the rest of it seemed to matter all that much; my hatred of Maurice settled back into a sort of background hum of seething resentment, I tuned out the bulk of my Mother's psychological torture and even my sympathy for the dumped boyfriend faded pretty quickly. I don't think I thought of him at all after maybe a couple of days.

Cest la vie.

You may have noticed that throughout this post I've never mentioned the boyfriend's name. I'd like to tell you that it was an effort to protect his anonymity (although I mentioned Maurice's name a lot; but then he is a dick so maybe I just don't care about protecting him?) but in truth it's because I don't remember his name.

That's right. This poor bloke, who's life, and heart, was chewed up and spat out by my oh so lovely family, doesn't even merit my remembering his name. That's just shit.

One BIG happy family

I thought that, having neglected the blog for a while, I would come back with some lightweight entries; to ease myself back in to the MoaN way of thinking, if you like. That was fine for a couple of weeks, but talk of school assemblies and Gob Stoppers was never going to last; and so it comes to pass that this week we return to our regularly scheduled programming. Yes, a bad thing is going to happen to me.

To be fair, this story isn't as bad as some, at least on the face of it. There will be no vicious beatings, drunken rampages, accusations of sexual shenanigans or any of the other delights you might have come to expect from this blog. Nope, none of that.

So, longtime readers of MoaN may remember that my Mother, while living rent free in my Aunt's house, had decided that she was madly in love with said Aunt's live-in boyfriend, and started an affair with him. As you do. Upon our moving out of that house and into our own, he came with. Oh Joy. The delightful chap in question was called Maurice, and the full story is here.

Maurice was a bully, no question about it, but he was a clever and unpredictable one. Or he was just erratic. One of the two. You see, he would rarely actually hit us. For large periods he would be the nicest, friendliest bloke in the world, then he would start in with his little 'jokes'; his derogatory comments disguised as 'helping' and his childish love of getting one over on us; proving his power over us in petty little ways. The physical violence happened, and I'm going to give you two examples of it in this post, but to someone with as many confidence issues as I had; someone who spent so much of his time battling the inner voices that were so intent on convincing him he was worthless, and a joke; the snideness and power games were the real killer.

Take the first of the two instances of violence I mentioned. As I prepare to type this, I look back at it and I can see how petty the whole thing was, and I worry that I don't come out of it looking any better than he does, but I'm going to put it down anyway. I was reading the TV mag. I always read the TV mag because I wasn't actually allowed to watch all that much TV so I would use it to get a glimpse into the wondrous stuff I was missing. Except on this occasion, he snatched away the mag, to see what was on, then shoved it down the side of his seat. I asked for it back, but he refused, on the grounds that I didn't need it because I wouldn't be watching anything anyway.

What harm would it have done to let me read it? None, and judging from the huge smirk he wore, he knew it. But he wouldn't relent even when - I'm not afraid to sacrifice some dignity for a good cause - I started to beg him. After a while I snapped, shoutd that he could keep it, and stormed out of the room. Which should have been the end of the affair, but no. He followed me.

The smirk was gone, the mocking tone was gone, all pretense at joviality was gone. He stormed through the door, walked over to me, smacked me full across the side of the face and yelled at he top of his lungs, "Don't you ever talk to me like that, you little bastard." Then, ignoring my crying, he went back to living room and within moments he and my Mother were back laughing and joking. I was so insignificant, so minor a concern to them, that stripping me of one of my few true pleasures in that house for a joke and leaving me red faced and crying when I dared voice complaint, was no more than a momentary blip on the little blippy thing of their day. I doubt my Mother had even registered what had happened at all.

One of Maurice's (very) few good points, at least from the point of view of us kids, was that he very often, on a whim, decide to move out and go back to our Aunt; usually after a particularly big blow-up at my Mother that may or may not have resulted in black eyes and busted lips, depending on hoe much alcohol had been consumed. Of course, we always knew he'd be back; that much was inevitable; but his absences allowed us brief, blessed periods of calm, where we only had one violent drunken bully to contend with instead of two, and even when he did make his inevitable returns things would be relatively relaxed for a while, as they went through their latest 'Honeymoon' period.

Except, on one occasion. On one occasion, he brought his kids with him. Now, the house we lived in was not large. It was a two bedroom-er, and there were 3 of us kids (2 boy and a girl), sharing one of those rooms. When Maurice arrived one day, after an absence of a couple of weeks, with 2 kids in tow, it was never going to be ideal. Sardines in a tin, we were. Before they arrived, our room had a set of bunk beds (for the boys) and a bed for my sister. It was fine. After they arrived 2 mattresses; not beds, mattresses; were sourced from somewhere and the floor in our room promptly disappeared. Marice's youngest boy, Martin, took my bunk and I ended up in one of the floor positions, and Maurice's eldest, Stephen, took the other. My sister kept her bed, which was only fair, but the subject of some argument for a while.

One particular morning, it must have been a weekend or school holiday, because there was no urgency involved, I woke to find that my Brother was crying, my sister was downstairs yelling and my two cousins/stepsiblings/fucking annoyances were screaming at each other about, hell, I don't know. Just another day in paradise.

Rolling over, I tried to go back to sleep. But my brother wouldn't stop crying and those two just kept on at each other, and my head started to pound, so I inquired as to what was going on. Through the screaming I managed to find out that they had decided it was funny to trow things at my Brother. I found this out through amouthfull of abuse, naturally. Then they started tormenting me. Jumping onto me from my sisters bed, making little sing-song references to my loving to read (foreign concept to them) and pulling my books down to throw at me. They were a delightful pair.

I did nothing. I could have shouted at them to stop. I could have gotten up and slapped them one (violence being the foremost means of diplomacy amongst kids at that age). I could have gotten dressed and gone downstairs. I did none of those things. I just wanted an easy life, and even at that young age I knew that trying to do anything, one way or another, would just pour fuel on the fire. So I just lay back and waited for them to get bored. Until Maurice barged in.

He wasn't happy. And his ire was directed in only one direction. You guessed it. What was going on? Why was I letting them bounce on the beds? Why were there books all over the room? Why was my Brother crying? Ah, yes, of course, it was my fault. So I snapped.

I told him if he wanted someone to look after his kids he should get out of fucking bed and do it himself because it wasn't my job. I told him, better yet, he shouldn't have dragged them away from their Mother. I told him "if you want to have a fucking go at someone why don't you have a go at these little bastards cos they're a pair of fucking animals." Then I told him to leave me alone to go back to sleep.

Then he hit me.

This made my Brother cry more, and it made 'those 2 little bastards' laugh. He smiled at them and walked out. And they started up again. Only this time, they did it with the added authority of knowing that they weren't going to get into trouble for it. Here's the thing though; I didn't care, because I think that at that moment my long standing inability to take seriously anyone in authority over me that didn't deserve to be, was born. I had stood up to him, and his response had been to hit me and then laugh and encourage his kids. He was little more than a child himself, so why should I respect him? The blow hadn't even hurt that much. I knew, in that moment, that I was better than him. I waited for them to get bored, then I went back to sleep with a smile on my face.

It was fleeting of course. The voices in my head would never let me feel that good about myself for long; there would always be some insecurity or some new flaw in myself to bring me down again. But from that moment on, I never feared Maurice, and never took his threats seriously, again. And while there were further occasions when he would raise his hand to me, they became fewer and further between with every passing day. I think he could see that they weren't having the desired effect.

Childline

So, today you were going to get the mirth filled tale of how my psycho neighbour killed my pet rabbit (and not in a good way, I didn't even get any freaky sex out of the deal) and the separate, but related, incident in which said psycho neighbour egged her children on to physically attack me. However, and that's a very big however, I couldn't manage to fit the tales into a respectable wordcount nor, and this is the big problem, make them readable at *any* length.

So I quit. I'll no doubt come back to those tales at some point, either together or, more likely, stretched out to fill two posts instead of one, like the relevant bits of a weekends X-Factor. In truth, I realised as I writing it that I'd actually jumped ahead a bit in the old life story anyway, so I can justify postponing them as a narrative preserving act, rather than the 'I'm too lazy to do another re-write' act that it so obviously is. Win!

What's that I don't hear you cry? What will he replace it with at such short notice? Well I'll tell you. Childline.

A grand idea in principal, Childline was the freephone number for children to get advice about their problems. (They're still around, but online now.) But to me, Childline was first port of call for your more imaginative prank caller.

Yes, I did indeed use Childline as a source of great amusement. You see, as I've noted before, I didn't, for the most part, consider myself to be all that badly done by. Certainly I knew that I was somewhat neglected by my Mother and her waster boyfriend; certainly I knew that technically speaking the beatings I regularly received from them were not strictly legal; and certainly I knew that some would consider the daily torment, both mental and physical that I endured at the hands of schoolyard bullies was less than ideal. Just as certainly though, I knew that I had good mates, that I was a bright student and that I had everything I needed to have a grand old time. Life was pretty good.

So it never occurred to me to actually use Childline for it's intended purpose; that being, to talk to someone about my problems. Instead I used it to talk about fake problems, to invent stories of such deprivations and indignities as would make Dickens himself think "nah, mebbe not, bit far-fetched there Charlie lad".Did I feel bad, as they poured sympathy and concern down the phone? Nope, twas hilarious.

At one point, I made mention of the fact that I had been on the phone to Childline, while in the same room as my mother and Maurice the dickhead pseudo step-dad. I genuinely hadn't thought it through, as to how they might react, having only mentioned it because I thought my tale of woe that I'd spun the volunteer might make them laugh. The looks of panic on their faces were priceless. So good in fact that I didn't finish my story and just let them sweat.

Looking back, with the growed up eyes of a jaded mandult, I see how reprehensible my behaviour was. Childline was a charity, running on fumes and staffed by volunteers who gave up their time because they genuinely cared and probably felt like shit after listening to the horrible stuff that *genuinely* traumatised kids must have been telling them. I wasted their time and probably caused them more distress.I was, in short, a little shit.

So there you have it. A post in which I was to be portrayed as a victim has been replaced by a post in which I am the villain. We were overdue for one of those anyway.

Dangerous Games

One of the bigger problems you can have, as the oldest of a gang of kids, and therefore their de facto leader, is the pressure on you to always be the best at stuff. How embarrassing would it be, for example, to announce that you were all going to have a game of something, and then get your arse handed to you by a five year old? Exactly.

I had a massive problem then, in that when it came to sports of any shape, size or description, I was essentially, and I use the technical term here (I looked it up), absolutely f'ing useless. Ever the resourceful chap though, I soon came up with ways that I could capitalise on my inherent strengths and hide my weaknesses. Namely, by inventing games so that I could tailor the rules to suit myself.

I have a very high pain threshold. I say this not to brag, or to out myself as a masochist, but merely to state a fact. (I could get into why I had an abnormally high pain threshold for a little child but if you've read this blog before, or intend to again, it'll be pretty self-explanatory.)

This high pain threshold meant that if I invented games that gave the advantage to people who didn't fear pain, or could persevere through pain, I would be able to kick some toddler butt, no problem. So that's exactly what I did. It would come back to bite me.

Now, when I say that I invented these games, what I actually mean is that of course I didn't invent these games. At the time though, in the arrogance of youth, I thought I did. In truth, they were pretty basic variations of old staples.

BANKS

Like the one where you had to race to the bottom of a bank and then back to the top. Except in our version we found the steepest slopes we could (some were practically vertical) so getting down was a virtual freefall and getting back up was like climbing Everest. Add in the fact that interfering with other participants was positively encouraged, in as violent a way as you liked, and it's a miracle no-one died.

TORTURE

Or the one were you split into two teams and one team had a codeword, with each member being responsible for one letter. The other team had to capture you to get your letter. We'd done this at school, in PE, but there it was a basic 'tag and you're out' deal. In our version they had to physically restrain you and you could refuse to talk, which meant they had to torture your letter out of you. I actually nearly died once, playing this game late at night, on unfamiliar terrain. I was staying at my cousin Ian's house for a couple of nights and we introduced his friends to this game. I was being pursued down a back alley in the pitch black, completely unaware that it was used by residents to hang clotheslines. One was hanging low, I ran into it at neck height and...well, you can guess. Good times.

HUNTERS

Ah, the Daddy. In which we would all congregate in the big clearing at the centre of the woods and split into two teams, with one team having a headstart to scatter into the woods and the other team hunting them down to either capture or 'kill' them. What made this game such great fun was that we played it with guns. Actual guns, that actually shot you, with actual bullets.

Well, I say guns... What we used were air rifles and pistols that fired little lead pellets. They rarely broke the skin (only once on me, and that wasn't even while playing Hunters; it was a doped up neighbour firing blind across the back gardens) but they stung like mad if they caught you just right. Until you got used to them of course; once you'd been shot a few times you stopped feeling it so much and could often mask you're reaction and claim not to have been shot. Cheating, yes, but victory was everything, don'tcha know.

Most people wanted to be Hunters, because having the guns made them feel cool but I wanted to win and knew my strengths, so Hunted it was. I threw myself out of trees, down banks, over fences and through hedges...I came over all Rambo, with not a thought for how my body was going to recover. It's partly because of this that I'm so decrepit before my time now. Never mind though, I had a meaningless victory to last for an hour, that was the important thing.

My Mother knew about this game, as did most of our parents, and none of them tried to stop us for the longest time. Which, to put it mildly, was f*cking madness, now that I think back. Not the maddest thing about the whole affair though; no, that would be the fact that Maurice, responsible adult and de-facto Step Father, actually joined in! He regularly came down into the woods and took great pleasure (far more than the rest of us) in getting a hit on one of the kids. He even once tied me to a tree and fired over my head into the trunk; I'll freely admit, my bravado slipped that day.

We were finally forced to stop playing Hunters as a result of something Maurice did, actually. You see, as crazy as we were, in hindsight, to be doing what we were doing, we were actually careful. We shot at arms and legs (fleshy bits) and always aimed carefully. We were daft kids, but we were friends, and there was no way we were gonna risk hurting each other seriously. Maurice, it seems, had no such compunctions. During one particular game, I was being chased by him and after fording the stream and scrabbling up the far bank I hid behind a large bush. He knew I was there, but couldn't see me. Do you know what he did?

He fired blind, into the bush. Hitting me in the right temple. I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible that Maurice was an idiot.

I don't mind telling you, I screamed. I screamed louder than I'd ever screamed before or ever have again. Not even a drunken beating from my Mother at her most frenzied ever felt that bad. My vision was swimming, bolts of lightning were shooting through my head and I genuinely thought I was going to die.

We were never allowed to play Hunters again.