Shit Be About To Get Real, Yo!

Well, I promised you that with the arrival of my cousin Ian, 'shit be about to get real'. If we leave aside the fact that the phrase 'shit be about to get real' is not something I can get away with saying, ever, I was telling you the Gods honest. A lot of people came and went from our little group but none made quite the impact that Ian did.

Ians Mam was Sharon, another of my Mams many siblings. Together with her husband John she had three children; Ian, Neil and Wayne. Only Ian would really have that much of an effect on us because we rarely saw the others. You see, a few years before we moved to the village of Willington, Sharon and her family had lived there. They had moved out of the village a while previously but at weekends and on school holidays Ian, their eldest, would be brought down to stay at the home of their old neighbour, just a few streets away from us - literally a couple of minutes on foot or 30 seconds on your bike.

Bob was an elderly bloke that had formed a bit of an attachment to the family, having no close relatives of his own, and had been a regular babysitter for Ian and his brothers. After they moved away they kept bringing Ian back to stay with Bob so he wouldn't be too lonely. Looking back with todays more cynical eyes, some might think the situation a trifle dodgy looking. An old bloke, lives alone, has a young boy that's not related to him over to stay in his one bedroom home; oo-er Missus and all that. But phooey to the lot of you.

So anyway, Ian would stay at Bobs whenever we weren't at school and so was perfectly placed to join our little gang. I often wonder what he used to do with his time at Bobs before we moved in; certainly he gave no indication that he already knew any of our group and he didn't bring any other friends with him; close as they may have been I don't think it could have been much fun if it was just the two of them. Oh well.

Ian was almost the same age as me; I think there was about 5 or 6 months in it; and so we took on a kind of joint leadership role. I'll admit, he was much cooler than I was so we got a lot more active after he showed up than when I was calling the shots alone. What can I say; I'm a born loner, I wasn't cut out to be a leader. The others were tactful enough not to say anything - either that or they hadn't noticed anything and it was my paranoia convincing me that they liked him more - but I was always a little bit conscious at the start of every day of this lingering sense of being a hanger on to his gang. The feeling would fade of course, as each day wore on, but it always took me a little while in the mornings to properly loosen up and stop trying so hard. However, cousins or no, same age or no, I don't think I'd have been the one who, if asked, Ian would have described as his best friend in the group. That honour went to Wayne. The two of them became pretty much inseparable after a while. Of course, it didn't happen overnight. No, they had to scare the crap out of us all first.

I'm not the most empathetic person in the world (I remember the first time I heard a description of sociopathy and thought 'hmmm, that sounds familiar'; scary thought) so it took me a while to cotton on but there was apparently a lot of tension between Ian and Wayne from day one. Of course, it pretty soon escalated to the point where I couldn't possibly miss it; those two seemed to loathe each other with an absolute passion. I never learned the root of their antipathy but I was certainly present the day they got it out of their systems; the stains never did come out of my underkeks.

One Saturday morning we were all hanging around at the Speccy.

Spectrum Leisure Complex 'The Speccy'We were around the back of the main building, at the top of the huge grass slope that dropped down to the bottom of the ski slope.There was much laughing and joking and threatening to push the littler ones down the bank, when suddenly, from out of nowhere, BANG, Wayne had punched Ian in the face. Ian swiftly retaliated, a good hard kick to the back of Waynes leg to bring him down and then a punch to the side of the head. This wasn't wrestling around, this wasn't play-fighting; this was a proper full on fight. I was terrified; I'd never seen a proper fight before and these two looked like they were going to kill each other; at one point Wayne was smashing Ians head into the side of the building, lips were bleeding, clothes were torn; it was like something out of a Philoe Bedoe movie. Then it got really serious.

From out of nowhere, Ian pulled a pair of scissors. I genuinely thought he was going to kill Wayne. Luckily, the life or death-ness of the scene didn't last long. They wrestled for a bit, Ian dropped the scissors and they fell down the slope, punching and clawing at each other the whole way down. Then they stopped. Just like that, it was over. They both trudged back up the slope, Wayne left one way and Ian left the other and the rest of us were stood looking dumbfounded, before, as kids do, we got distracted by something else (there was a bowling match happening on the green and we ended up watching that).

We forgot about it fairly quickly, I have to say, but the that's what kids do isn't it? Looking back though, how close did I come to seeing one of my friends die? If Wayne hadn't wrestled the scissors away, would Ian have used them, and why the Hell was he carrying scissors around with him in the first place? Seems obvious that he came out spoiling for a fight, doesn't it? It's scary to think about.

As I say though, Ian and Wayne seemed to have gotten it out of their systems a bit with that fight. We were all one big group together but those two seemed to have a bond that none of the rest of us could quite get in on. I haven't seen either of them for years but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they were still best mates today. So, you know, all's well that...

Next : My first ever run in with the police. I was innocent. Well, kind of.

Dreams of death

I talked here about the weird nightmares I had as a very young child. I don't think there was anything particularly special about about a young boy dreaming of being scared of snakes, although I flatter myself that the 'Big Woman' stuff was all me. After those instances faded it would be a while before I was troubled by bad dreams again, but when they came, they were doozies.

They weren't really nightmares. I think that's the strange thing that makes me remember them so vividly after all these years. I mean, snakes coming out of walls and evil women wanting to grab you off the street, those are nightmares, but this new batch were just, well, exciting dreams. Dreams about things that would have absolutely terrified me in real life, but which I wasn't scared about in the dreams. Except that when I woke up, the bed would be drenched in sweat and I'd be shaking like a leaf. So was I scared or not? My body was scared but my mind wasn't? Does that happen?

The dreams would start with me walking around the little village I lived in. Then a bunch of people would appear with knives and guns. I would run and they would chase me. It was as simple as that really, except I knew with absolute crystal clarity that these people would kill me if they caught me. I would run for miles, up and down back alleys and side streets, through the woods, along the streams, even into shops and through to escape through the back door.(Shops I'd never been through the back of in my life so I was inventing all those back rooms in my head). I would never get tired even though I would keep going for what seemed in the dreams to be hours and even days. The dreams were never the same twice, in that I would run a different route and bump into different people each time but they always ended the same.

I would reach my house. For some reason I would decide that if I crouched down behind the little wall down the side of my house I'd be safe. Then a shadow would loom over me, I'd look up and there would be one of my tormentors, pointing a massive gun at me. I would smile, look down at the floor and say "Go on then".

And he would shoot me. At which point I would, presumably, die in the dream but it was of course at that moment that I would wake up. Now here is the thing. I have a crippling fear of death; that world changing fear that eats your insides when, as a child, you first discover your mortality has never left me. It's why I try to avoid thinking about it, and is probably one of the causes of my borderline sociopathic inability to grieve when others die, in as much that allowing myself to think about their deaths can only remind me of the inevitability of my own.

Yet, in this dream, I was never, at any point, afraid. I knew they were going to kill me but it didn't bother me. Even right at the end, when the moment came, I was all stoic and accepting of my fate. Now, you're probably thinking it was a dream, it doesn't have to make sense; or it was a dream, you were making yourself braver than you really are. If those theories are true though, and maybe it really is as simple as that, then it doesn't explain every other nightmare I've ever had. Because in those, I've been absolutely bloody terrified.

So there you have it. A child dreaming about being murdered by strangers every night for weeks. Pleasant reading, I'm sure you'll agree. Next : You've met my bro and sis, you've met Wayne and Lisa, now it's time to bring in the big guns. My cousin, Ian. Shit be about to get real, yo. (I'm so very sorry)

Animal Cruelty

Right, a short one this week, because frankly the subject matter makes me sick when I think of it. No, no, come back, it's nothing like that.

Depending on who you are, and what kind of person you are, the story I'm about to tell might possibly not seem all that bad but to me, it's a moment in my life that I feel utter shame for. I can't remember ever feeling worse than in the moments right afterward and even now, literally decades later, I sometimes dream about it and wake up feeling like, well, like shit.

It was shortly after we'd moved into the new house. We had pretty quickly gotten to know all the neighbours, because this was, after all, the worlds friendliest street, and the man up from us (technically the first house in the next street but he was an honorary member) had the cutest little puppy you've ever seen in your life. I don't remember the breed - I'm hopeless with this stuff, if it's a dog it's a dog, I can never remember the different types - but it was quite small and very excitable. All of us kids loved that dog with a passion, mainly because none of us were allowed one and it was the only one in the street.

So, the geography; we were the last house at the top of our street. His was the first house in the street that went up at a right angle from ours. On the corner where the two met was a quite large - to a childs eye - patch of grass. This grass had a couple of trees at one end that were perfectly spaced for goalposts and would one day save my best friends life, but that's another story.

We would play on this grass often, and if the weather was nice my Mam would bring out a chair and sit at the front door watching us. Our neighbour would also often sit outside his door, and allow his puppy to run around with us. (Not to mention crap all over the place. I can't remember if their were laws about dog waste back then but if there were they weren't as stringently enforced.) On this one particular day, a crowd of us were kicking a ball around on the grass, with this little dog running between our feet and chasing the ball. All good fun. At one point, because it really was a warm day and I didn't handle heat any better then than I do now - slightest hike above sub-arctic temps and I'm sweating like a missionary in a crock pot - I headed inside for a drink. AND INTO HELL!

Sidenote - We had a Pop-Man. Did anyone else have one of those? Do they still exist today? He came around once a week on a milk float type thing filled with crateloads of cheap pop. Big chunky glass bottles they were, and you got a discount if you returned the bottles. (I know shops gave pennies for empties but this man came to your door) We'd never had a pop-man at our previous homes, and never had another one after we moved. I miss having a pop-man.

Ahem, well. So I was on my way back out with my glass of generic cheapy lemonade when I heard my Mam moaning from her little stool at the front door. As was her wont - she was always a miserable cow, even before she hit the deepest depths of her drinking - she was moaning about something; but what? Yes, it was the dog. She was getting all worked up - under her breath, never one for confrontation when sober - about how the dog wouldn't leave us alone and 'the little bastard better not fucking bite any of them' and, well, you get the idea. The fact that the dog was having the time of it's life, so were us kids, and the thing had never shown the slightest inclination towards violence never entered into the equation; she wasn't happy.

Shall I tell you what I did? I put down my glass, pushed past my Mam, ran onto the grass and... kicked the dog as hard as I could in the belly while screaming at it to "get back you little bastard." The squeal it made broke my heart, I swear to God. It's owner went ballistic - and can you blame him? -, my Mam went apeshit, screaming at me to get inside and all my friends were just shouting at me, "what'd you do that for?", "pack it in dickhead" and "behave, you fucking nutter".

I just looked at the dog, curled up at his owners feet, giving out little yelps. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I felt, in all honesty, like scum. Because let's face it, that's exactly what I was.

That's the end of the story. I could make a bunch of excuses about how I was young and impressionable and was just following my Mams lead but, well, that's no excuse is it? I've done a lot of pretty reprehensible things in my life, but none, when I look back, make me feel as bad as this one does. The dog was soon frolicking at my feet again having, as dogs do, forgiven me. I'm not sure the owner ever did.

Wayne and Lisa

One of the first things I remember about the new place at Appleton Crescent was meeting Wayne and Lisa, who lived down the street from us. Wayne was around the same age as Suzanne and Lisa was about the same age as Andrew so of course, once we all started 'knocking about' (do people still use that phrase, I don't think I've heard it in a while?) with each other there was much joking amongst the adults about them pairing off and being boyfriend and girlfriend. Oh the hilarity.

In fact, it was a joke that very nearly backfired on them when one fine morning my mam went out into the back garden to find Andrew and Lisa, who were about 4 at the time, cuddled up on the bench together and talking about 'sexing'. Much panic ensued.

I met Wayne and Lisa on the Sunday of our first week in the new house. We'd been at school all week and had to 'help' unpack on the Saturday - a process which involved wandering around aimlessly while my Mother shouted at us - so Sunday was our first chance to really explore our new surroundings. Having gotten up early, as was my wont in those days - young me was weird, we all know it's not natural to be awake before noon on Sundays - and after eating my hot weetabix paste and watching a few cartoons I was on the starters block ready for 9am, which was the earliest time that we were allowed to leave the house on weekends because, well, I don't actually know why but that was the rule.

Our first port of call was the Spectrum Leisure Centre, or 'Speccy' as pretty much everyone called it. The Speccy was comprised of a sports hall, adventure playground, weightroom, snooker/pool room, dry ski slope, bowling green, tennis courts and a mythical function room that we kids never, ever saw in all the time we lived there. In all, a pretty impressive facility to have on your doorstep when you are a small child. It has to be said though that the biggest attraction very quickly became the woods that the centre was set into, which very quickly became a home away from home for us. It became our 'home turf' if you like, as my uncle Darren would find out to his cost later on. (Check out my last post for the thrilling details of that little adventure)

Anyway, we head on over to the speccy on that fine and lovely Sunday morning and we find, swinging about on the playground apparatus, Wayne and Lisa. Suzanne and Wayne already knew each other, being in the same class at school, and Andrew and Lisa, in that way that the smallest kids have, accepted each other instantly and were playing like they'd known each other their whole lives within minutes.

At first I hung right back. My 'little voices', while not yet the socially crippling nightmare they would one day become, were by no means absent at that point in my life and they were making their presence known here in a big way. The others had paired off so quickly, and so naturally, that anything I said and did would, I was convinced, be an unwelcome interruption. I was an outsider; a distraction. What I had failed to take into account was the fact that I was the oldest one there and at the ages we're talking about, 2 years is a big deal. To the others, I was cool, purely by dint of the fact that I was older. Looking back, it's obvious that while I was terrified that this little group of kids would never want to play with me, they were constantly showing off to try and impress me and earn my approval. Poor bastards; when I'm the coolest role model in your life, you're really in trouble, let me tell you.

Wayne became my best 'home' friend for a long while, purely because he lived closer to me than any other boys I knew. We didn't socialise at school of course, because the rules were different there. You socialised with your own age at school; the younger kids weren't cool enough and the older kids, well, they thought the younger kids weren't cool enough.

Others would come and go from our little group. My cousin Ian, who had a very tumultuous relationship with Wayne, as I'll go into at a later date; Philip, who tried (or his parents did) to get me in trouble with the police for theft; the twin girls whose name I can't remember for the life of me (despite one of them being my first post-Anne puppy love); Aisha and Lee (she was gorgeous and he was the coolest person I'd ever met, and gave me my first ever proper nickname); the twin boys, Mathew and Richard, one of whom was borderline psychotic and would scare the life out of us on his 'bad' days, and numerous others. Until the day we moved out of that street though, myself, Suzanne, Andrew, Wayne and Lisa were the core; we never fought - well, there was that one time - and we never drifted apart. It was us against the world and we loved every second of it.

So far as I know, Wayne never 'sexed' Suzanne, nor Andrew Lisa. Although years later I met Lisa again and I have to say, I don't think either one of us would have turned down the chance then. She grew up absolutely beautiful. Sadly by that point any lingering hero worship had long since worn off. Never mind.

Hot Pursuit

My heart trying it's hardest to beat it's way out of my chest and rivers of sweat coursing down my face I force myself to keep going, knowing that if I slow down now, even for a second, he'll be on me.

I pound across the car park and down the alley at the side of the centre. Risking a glance behind to make sure he hasn't turned the corner yet I leap up onto the wall, scrabble up the grass verge and reach the hedge. There's a patch, I know from past experience, where the base of the hedge is thinning. It's not really visible, certainly not to a casual glance, but if you know where it is you can slide through quite easily, no worse off than a couple of scuffed knees and a few scratches on your arms; a small price to pay in the current situation. In seconds I'm through, and off.

It's not match day, thank God, so I'm able to cut across the bowling green without upsetting too many people. The couple of old blokes in the far corner aren't happy (what's their problem, I've not gone near their balls?), and their yells follow me as I reach the end of the green and pause for breath. I know thy won't chase me, they're too old for that, but their cries will alert my pursuer, putting him back on my trail much faster than I'd hoped. This breather would have to be a short one.

I see him coming round the corner. There's nothing for it, I make to cut through the ski lodge. He doesn't know the terrain, he'll try to follow me, not realising that he could easily cut me off if he circled behind the building. That's the plan anyway. I make my move, pushing into the building past the two members of centre staff on their way out to investigate the commotion. Good; I'm past them before they can react but maybe they'll slow him down.

I pelt full speed through the lobby to the doors at the far side - earning myself a lot of disapproving glances from the stern looking customers, balls to them, this is an emergency - and straight out to the slope area. I briefly consider making a run straight across the slope but I know from bitter experience how treacherous a dry slope can be; one foot in one of the divets and your ankle's a goner. So it's down to the bottom and around past the crash barriers or up to the top and around that way. It's quicker going up, but it means braving yet more centre staff when I get to the rope pulley machine. No, down it is. I again hope that going the long way will confuse him.

The steps down are out of the question, you can't pick up a decent head of steam, so headlong plunge down the embankment it is then. Flailing my arms wildly for balance, I'm off. I've done this a hundred times before, I know what I'm doing; angle yourself just right and you can hit the crash barrier at the bottom of the slope. Don't, and you're over the drop, into the beck, and sporting wet trouser legs all the way home. Something else that will hopefully slow him down. I reach the bottom, hit the barrier - Bullseye - and skirt around it to the far side of the slope.

From here the plan is to follow the beck all the way. But which way? Downstream is back the way I came but it's fed here by two upstream flows. Which do I follow? Both lead to a similar hazard, which is the easiest to pass? I risk a look back, and up, and see him at the top of the embankment, looking down at me. He can see, but obviously isn't keen to follow me down. Have I lucked out? He's shouting something I can't quite make out - "Come back"?, "It's alright"? - but I'm not risking it. Decision made, I choose my path and am off.

I've got my breath back now - that little pause has helped - so I can pick up the pace a little. I make pretty good time along the beck bank, slowing only slightly as it starts it's pretty steep rise and then I've reached the tunnel that allows the beck to run uninterrupted under the centres top car park. There isn't much in the way of water coming through - never more than a trickle in this warm weather - but it's the height that's the difficulty; or not, if you've done it as many times as I have. I swing in, keeping a firm hold on the roots I know to be sturdiest, hang for a second, and then my feet find their accustomed perches. The brick and blockwork around the tunnel is old - there are more than enough foot and handholds if you know where to look and remember not to think about the brief moments that you're hanging over nothing - and it's not long before I'm in the mouth of the tunnel. I crouch, far enough back that I'm half couched in shadow,and wait.

Has he followed me? Or did he give up at the top of the bank. He's out of shape, put on some weight recently, maybe it seemed too much like hard work. I relax a little, allow myself to settle. I sit down - there's plenty of room, the flow is about 2" wide in the centre of the tunnel - and, thinking of the madness of the last few minutes, I start to chuckle.

Then his foot appears in the opening and I can hear swearing as he fumbles his way down to me. Shit, one of the skiers must have pointed him in the right direction. He's not as surefooted as my experience allowed me to be but he's not being overly cautious either so he'll be on me in no time. Rising to my feet with a resigned sigh, but remaining hunched,I head deeper into the tunnel. It doesn't take long before I am in complete darkness. I don't panic, I know that it won't last for long; the tunnel is straight as they come and doesn't cover a particularly large distance. The other end will be visible before I know it. As soon as the far opening becomes visible and I have enough light to see my feet - blurrily though it may be - I pick up my pace and it's not long before I'm almost out. Then I hear it.

"Bastard!", closely followed by "Fuck, Jesus!" I smile, exit the tunnel into the farmers field at the other side of the carpark, make my way up the grass to the stone wall, clamber over it and head home at a pleasant saunter.

Know your terrain, that's the key. When you've been in that tunnel as often as I have, you know that a few seconds after you hit total darkness, the roof drops by the height of a couple of bricks. Why? Who knows. Perhaps that was the original opening years ago, before the carpark was built, and the extension didn't match up exactly. Or perhaps repairs over the years have been less than uniform - I mean, who's going to see it, right - but for whatever reason, you are really going to want to crouch that little bit more when you hit that spot. I hadn't even though about it, it was just instinct now. He wasn't so lucky.

I arrive home, bruised, slightly bloodied, and with the bottom of my trousers a trifle wet, but exuberant nonetheless. He hadn't caught me. As cocky and arrogant as he had been, I'd beaten him.

He arrives home drenched in sweat, barechested because he is clutching his T-shirt to his forehead to staunch the bleeding, and with a massive grin on his face. "Alright, clever shit, but I'll get you next time."

My Uncle Darren, everyone. Cool, even when concussed.

Happiness, thy name is Appleton

And so we reach that point in my childhood where the memories become much more vivid, and indeed more numerous. Also, in what I'm sure will come as a surprise to anyone who's read more than a couple of my entries on here, much happier.

That's not to say that the misery is over, of course. My Mother was still on the slippery slope to alcoholism, my Father was still conspicuous by his absence, Maurice and his punch happy ways was a regular presence, money was extremely tight (although never so tight as to preclude the purchasing of copious amounts of alcohol and cigarettes) and one of the darker moments in my Sisters life wasn't far away. (I may or may not discuss that one at a later date. No problem airing my own stuff but that one, for all that it affected us all, was mainly her problem to deal with.)

For all of that though, the next few years were going to be the happiest of my young life. You see, for all the bad shit that was going on, it was balanced by the good. And a lot of that good was entirely down to moving into that new house.

It was a council house like any other. It was small and not particularly grand and it was slap in the middle of a grotty estate filled with yobs and druggies. It was also in one of the friendliest streets I've ever lived on.

The street in question was called Appleton Crescent. I'll never forget it. It was a dead end, which meant that if you didn't live in it, you had no reason to enter it. This, coupled with the fact that some divine intervention meant that this street, and this street alone, wasn't used as a dumping ground for the worst of the worst by the Council(my family, arguably, being the exception), meant that it became it's own little world, cut off from the rest of the Estate. Friendly people, who all got along, not troubled by anything beyond their own little bubble. You remember the old titles on Neighbours, where all of the residents descended on the street and had a massive game of cricket? That was us. A truer sense of community I've never known.

I made proper hardcore friends, had an awesome leisure centre on the doorstep (we could never afford to actually go in but it had a play area and was set into a wood, which provided hours of - quite dangerous - fun) and best of all, there was the wasteground. A massive great chunk of land that had once housed ,well, houses. A little terrace of three still stood, slap in the middle of it, we could never figure out why they were allowed to stand when all around them had been pulled down, but other than those a huge swathe had been cut by the Council, seemingly to no end because we were told it had stood empty for years and it would stand empty for several more before anything was done (and didn't it break our hearts when that day came, though we made them work for it).

So, if anyone is still reading this blog, you can rest assured that it won't all be unremitting misery any longer. I have happy stories too. Although come to think of it, a lot of my happy memories also contain random acts of violence and copious amounts of petty crime, so don't be expecting Little House On The Prairie.

A new start with shaky foundations

So where was I before I got sidetracked by the BNP wannabes? Ah yes, my Mam the homewrecker.

Now, I was quite naive back then in a lot of ways. Certainly I wasn't seeing the full picture as regards Mickey and Maurices relationship. I was soon to learn that Maurice, far from the kindly Uncle I'd had him pegged as was, and as far as I know still is, a nasty piece of work - a violent bully who loved to lord it over women and children. In the grand scheme of things Mickey was probably better off without him. Not that that justifies my Mother stealing him away from her own sister mind you. And I'm still not sure what it says about her intelligence that she would want to, given what she knew about him (his treatment of Mickey, which they'd managed up to then to keep secret from us kids, apparently being common knowledge in the family). Still, love conquers all eh?

We stayed at their house for a relatively short time. The overcrowding our presence caused meant we were pretty quickly given a place of our own by the council. Nevertheless, there was still a very uncomfortable period between the declaration of 'love' and us actually leaving, when we all had to live together under the same roof, desperately trying to pretend that there was nothing wrong and everyone was happy. What kind of hell must that have been for Mickey?

Anyway, eventually the time came for us to move out. Which, is the point that things became really uncomfortable. Maurice was coming with us, that much was set, but it became increasingly clear that Mickey was still hoping he'd change his mind and stay with her. God knows why she would want him to, but whatever.

The new house being only about 10 minutes walk away (itself not an ideal situation), we would transfer our stuff in a number of journeys on foot, rather than springing for the cost of transport. It was on the last such trip that I would personally witness, for the first but by no means last time, Maurices temper.

We had left the house with the last of our belongings and were making our way across the grass in front of the house. Mickey came out about a minute after us and started shouting at Maurice. At first she was begging him not to go, then she started hurling abuse at him, slagging off both him and my mother. I was a little embarrassed but kept on walking,and made sure my sister did the same. Not Maurice though. He turned round, sprinted across to her, punched her in the face and then crouched over her on the ground, screaming into her face as he held her down by the throat. He threatened, top of his lungs, that he would kill her if she didn't go back inside. Then he just got up and walked back to us, leaving her lying on the grass sobbing.

All told, not one of the most pleasant things I'd ever witnessed.

Maurice moved in with us in our new house and would be a pivotal figure in my childhood for the next few years. Not always a live-in figure, mind you, that was very off and on, but never far away. Some of those times were actually fun. Some though, not so much.