The Wayfarer Chronicles - Book

There's a saying that goes something along the lines of having children doesn't come with a rule book. Come to think of it, why would it need to? With every parent having begun life as children themselves, they've had first hand experience of what it feels like to be one. Yet, in reality this experience may count for little and be quickly forgotten by parents forging a child-rearing path which may well be influenced by how they themselves were parented.

So, if there is such a thing as an ideal childhood, I wonder what would it look like. Would it be a wholesome experience free from strife and hardship or perhaps one consisting of elements of both grief and harmony? Regardless of which is better, perfection in parenting seems to me to be an altogether unrealistic expectation. As for the child, the likelihood of enjoying a happy childhood depends upon many things, central to which is the character and past experiences of their parents.

Many people may pay the ultimate compliment to their own parents by emulating the way in which they were raised. Meanwhile, others may vow never to raise their children the way their parents raised them. Either way, at the heart of good parenting lies an understanding of the basic needs of children and a commitment from the parents to put such needs before their own.

Among the most fundamental needs of any child, or any person for that matter, is the need to know they're loved and know where they belong. Indeed, the lack of a sense of either in childhood can have dire consequences in later life and lead many an unfulfilled person to look for love and acceptance in the most undesirable places with similarly undesirable results. There are those who are fortunate enough to find family among their relatives while others are forced to look elsewhere. Furthermore, some will continue to look for love from those whose need to be loved is greater than any capacity to give love.

It is not my intention in the retelling of this story to paint a biased picture by emphasising the bad over the good. Indeed, in the interests of fairness to all concerned, I intend to present as best I can a balanced version of events in order for the reader to judge the character of those featured herein. Suffice to say this is not a hard luck story, but a success story. A story told from the perspective of a boy who struggled, fought and survived the very people who should have loved him and ensured he knew where he belonged. Instead, he ventured through life as if he were alone, a wayfarer, a joker, a protector, a truth seeker and a problem solver.

What I know of my parents' lives is based largely on what they and their respective family members chose to reveal. Born in London in 1934 to Jack and May Hills, my dad, John Robin, was thirty-eight years old by the time of my birth. The British Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Woolwich, South-East London, was the place where I entered the world as the third of John Robin's four children. His first child, a daughter named Leigh, was born in April, 1960, to him and his first wife, Jackie. John Robin and Jackie were married no more than seven years before she left him following an affair with his brother-in-law, Jim, who'd married John Robin's younger sister, also named Jackie.

Following the breakdown of his first marriage, John Robin left the family home in Lewisham and apparently went to sea intent on discovering the manhood his first wife had mocked him for lacking. Upon his return to London in 1968, he rented a flat in Bennett Park, Blackheath, and rejoined the Prudential Insurance Company with whom he'd been an insurance agent since leaving the RAF in 1956. Tragically, in 1936, Jack Hills died of tuberculosis when John Robin was but two years old. Exposed to the deadly infection through his profession as a glass-blower, Jack's son would have no memory of his father.

Considering Jack's kind and gentle nature, it's little wonder that May was said to have been inconsolable when he died. With no other means by which to raise their son, May's older sister Liz and younger sister Grace looked after John Robin while May went out to work. Come the late 1930s, May married a man named Harry. May and Harry eventually settled in a large semi-detached council house in Campshill Road in Lewisham along with John Robin and his half-sisters, Val and Jackie, born of Harry and May. Feared by his wife and children as a mercurial man with a cruel temper, Harry never warmed to Dad and bullied him in a way he would spare both his daughters. While the reason for the bullying remained unknown, there's also no way of knowing whether Harry's cruelty actually created or merely reinforced his stepson's altogether meek and unassuming character.

Compounding his misery, May's apparent lack of affection towards her children did little to mitigate the effects on John Robin of Harry's bullying. Being six years older than his sister Val and almost eight years older than Jackie, John Robin often spent rueful time having to babysit his younger siblings. He would lament as much on numerous occasions in the future to his offspring how he felt he'd done his time looking after children. Following his perceived penance, in the early 1950s, John Robin joined the RAF as the force typist. With his travels taking him to Egypt and Cyprus, he tasted freedom for the first time until his discharge in 1956.

Following his failed marriage to Jackie and subsequent trip to sea, while living in Bennett Park in 1968, John Robin met the girl who would become his second wife and my mother. At the time of their meeting, at age seventeen, Mum was roughly half Dad's age. Dad never spoke of where they met or what initially attracted him to Mum. Nonetheless, if a mature relationship was what he wanted, it's doubtful he would have found it in the arms of a seventeen-year-old girl. Furthermore, Dad was a man of simple needs who, like many men of his generation, were accustomed to having a woman do everything for him. Therefore, as long as his dinner was on the table when he came home from work and he could get his leg over whenever the opportunity arose, he'd be a happy man.

As aware of Dad's fundamental needs as I eventually became, I found myself in later life questioning why he thought a seventeen-year-old girl would be a good choice for meeting them. While she would meet his needs in the early days of their relationship, by the mid 1970s a sudden and inexplicably dramatic change occurred in her behaviour. For a man apparently lacking in emotional intelligence concerned primarily with the fulfilment of his needs, Dad would soon find himself as powerless as his young children to cope with the sudden and tempestuous change in his young wife, Pamela.

Born in Camberwell, south-east London in 1951 to Ron and Lucy Edmonds, Pamela would be the first of their six children together. However, Pamela was not the eldest sibling, as both Ron and Lucy both had a child each from a previous relationship. Ron enjoyed a career in banking while Lucy kept house for Ron and their burgeoning family. The Edmonds clan lived a comfortable existence in houses in the Lewisham, Lee and Catford areas of south-east London. Home life consisted of an inter-generational household of parents, maternal grandparents and an aunt named Joyce, with the seven Edmonds children all sharing beds.

A strict disciplinarian, if Ron hit one child he would hit them all. However, not without kindness or favour it could be said that Ron was a fool for his wife. The standing family joke within the family went that Ron would give Lucy the top brick off the chimney if she asked for it. According to Lucy, Ron had an obvious favourite among their children who she considered to be Pamela. Her belief in her daughter's special status rankled Lucy and roused within her a deep feeling of jealousy and spite. However, it was not the perceived favouritism of Pamela that persistently pitted her against her mother, as much as Pamela's contention that she was being sexually abused by her maternal grandfather.

My mother spoke very little about the alleged abuse perpetrated against her, regarding it as too horrific to relive. However, she alluded to having been paid by her grandfather to keep schtum and hid the money in a crack in the stairs of the family home. When confronted one day by her mother, who had observed her concealing money and demanded to know from where it came, Pamela's admission of the abuse she had suffered was roundly rejected by Lucy, who then proceeded to accuse her of stealing from her purse.

The final nail in Pamela's coffin came following her rejection of her parents' attempts to plan her future. By 1968, now aged seventeen and long possessed of an unapologetically wilful character, Pamela resisted her parents' wishes for her to marry a member of their extended family. Her rejection of Ron and Lucy's proposal occurred around the time that Pamela met John Robin. Crucially, after a series of assignations, one night, Pamela committed the unforgivable transgression of staying overnight at John Robin's flat in Bennett Park.

While the exact details of the doorstep showdown differed depending on who was telling the story. Lucy contended that Pamela left the house of her own free will while Pamela maintained that her belongings were waiting for her on the doorstep when she arrived home. Pamela's grandmother weighed in, along with her other daughter, Pamela's auntie Joyce, by slapping Pamela around the face. Regardless of whose version of events bore greater resemblance to the truth, nonetheless, Pamela's subsequent departure from the family home threw together two hapless individuals burdened by the wretchedness of their respective pasts. Time would reveal just how mismatched John Robin and Pamela were and how their peculiar coupling perhaps owed more to convenience than chemistry or common interests.

Although the present harmoniousness between John Robin and Pamela wouldn't last, by mid 1969, she had fallen pregnant. Suffering low birth weight and breathing difficulties upon his birth on 27th January, 1970, her first born child, named Matthew, died after only 12 hours of life. Following their move to a two-bedroom house in Southbourne Gardens in Lee, south-east London, Pamela learned she was pregnant again. In December of the same year, Pamela gave birth to a second child, a daughter, who I shall refer to by her nickname, Dee. Almost two years almost to the day following Dee's birth, in December 1972, I came along followed just under five years later by my younger sister, Saskia.

With Dad working as an insurance agent for The Prudential while Mum remained at home to take care of her children, their respective roles were typical of the time. While Dad, with his strong work ethic, was well suited to hard work, Mum was his polar opposite. Indeed, they were polar opposites in most respects and had little in common except the need for fulfilment of their respective emotional needs yet with virtually no capacity to meet the emotional needs of the other. In addition, they shared a joint propensity to place the fulfilment of their own emotional needs before those of their children.

So, with a hard working and productive father and a stay at home mother, my family ticked all the boxes of what was considered the nuclear family. However, this did not make the home environment a wholesome one because in many respects my family was far from normal. How could it be when at the centre of it all was a woman who, with her casual lies and cruelties, her deceit, her dark moods and her erratic behaviours, struggled to slay the demons of her past.

Drawn into the storm that had been building within her was a man hopelessly dependent on her yet powerless to resist her and equally powerless to control the most destructive elements of her character. Between the two ill-fated individuals lay three innocent children struggling to make sense of their world and find refuge amid the storm soon to rage around them which threatened to engulf them all.

This is the story told from the perspective of one of their children; a story of a boy's fight for survival, a fight to escape his parents, a fight for life and the right to just be a boy, a boy called Johnno.

My earliest memories I can date from around the age of two. Among them are of my elder sister Dee and I being strapped into the back seat of my dad's car and listening cheerfully to the music playing on the radio. The theme continued at home where Mum played the songs of her favourite artists of the day, such as John Denver, Abba, The Carpenters and The Bee Gees. On the radio, Jimmy Saville's Old Record Club of a Sunday lunchtime she'd particularly loath to miss. While in those days Mum tended to listen to her music aloud, there'd come a time when, lost to those around her, she'd don a pair of oversized headphones and retreat into her own far-away world.

Situated on a quiet suburban street in Lee, south-east London, our house at thirty-one Westdean Avenue was the first one which I firmly recall. The V-shaped avenue consisted of two rows of 1930s terraced houses on either side each with their mock Tudor style apexes. Neatly trimmed privet hedges defined the borders of many front gardens, including ours. Our neighbour at number thirty-three was a grumpy middle-aged man by the name of Mr. Richmond. His large, dark rimmed glasses, similar to those worn by my dad, suited his altogether unfriendly manner. I rarely saw Mr. Richmond speak to my parents. He didn't seem a particularly happy man and struck fear into me and every other child on Westdean Avenue.

In contrast, Mrs. Bird, our neighbour at number twenty-nine, was a gentle and kind elderly lady. Next to her lived Auntie Mari. While not our actual aunt, all the children of the avenue referred to Auntie Mari by that name. A petite Asian lady, Auntie Mari would often come outside during warmer weather and doll out ice-pops of many different colours from a brown paper bag. Needless to say, Auntie Mari enjoyed considerable popularity among the children of Westdean Avenue.

Our home would've appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary to anybody who passed by. My bedroom window looked out onto the avenue alongside Mum and Dad's while Dee's overlooked our back garden. My earliest memories of Dee are of a rather shy and introverted girl. Her chestnut brown hair cut in a basin style so typical among seventies children framed a small oval-shaped face dotted with freckles. Her skinny frame lent itself perfectly to the kind of athleticism which enabled Dee to outrun most other five-year-olds and out-perform the boys in her favourite sport of football. Consequently, with her characteristic tom-boyishness and athletic prowess Dee was often asked if she was, in fact, a boy. As for me, with a carbon copy pudding bowl haircut I resembled Dee yet without the freckles and dark brown hair. With my light-brown bowl cut resembling that of actor and comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor, my Auntie Grace would often remark each time she opened her front door whenever we visited that I reminded her of the famed 'Goodies' star.

At little more than five feet tall, my mother's lack of height rather accentuated her stoutness. Despite being overweight, her round and protruding stretch-mark ravaged belly and similarly large breasts were to me both comforting and reassuring. In addition, Mum sported a peculiarity in the form of a chipped front tooth which she said occurred following a fall while climbing out of a swimming pool as a child. With chestnut brown hair framing a pretty face, comparisons could be drawn between my mother and another well-known and overweight celebrity at the time in the form of international singing star, Cass Elliot.

As for Dad, he seemed like a giant to me, although most adults appear tall to small children. His dark, salt and pepper coloured hair brushed backwards exposed his receding hairline while his ever present dark-rimmed glasses created that same forbidding look of our neighbour, Mr. Richmond. Yet, Dad's most prominent feature sported by many men at the time was his bushy, jawbone length sideburns. Being below average height at five foot six inches tall and plagued by bowel problems which would bedevil him throughout his life, Dad cut a rather unhealthy and fragile figure, both physically and emotionally.

A fundamentally unaffectionate man, I witnessed Dad belly-laugh and cry no more than once. On account of their mutual love of football, Dad had an easier time forming a bond with Dee than he did with me. With my enjoyment of the music that Mum played, I developed a stronger attachment to her than to Dad. However, that did not prevent me for now from gravitating towards Dad until such time in the not too distant future when the nature of our relationship would dramatically and permanently change.

Approaching his mid forties by 1976, Dad had worked as an insurance agent for the best past of twenty years. Being a productive man, he appreciated routine and was one of life's grafters. His morning routine began by rising around seven o'clock and making a cup of tea before having a strip wash at the bathroom sink, with the door always remaining open. Consequently, I grew accustomed to the sight of Dad's naked, hairless buttocks and pendulous scrotum dangling free as he bent over the sink. Both Mum and Dad thought nothing of wandering about the house at times wearing very little clothing, therefore, the sight of their near naked bodies soon became a very familiar sight.

A further mark of his eccentricity was how Dad shaved with an old fashioned soap stick and brush. Signalling the completion of his ablutions, Dad would always conclude with a splash of Old Spice patted on each cheek followed by a little square of toilet paper covering the part on his face or neck where he'd nicked himself shaving. Always smartly turned out, Dad donned one of his many boxy suits before heading out to work.

On account of his rather reserved nature, Dad never enjoyed a particularly large circle of friends. However, one exception was a work colleague, a fellow Prudential insurance agent by the name of Bill Stone. Apart from my uncles, Bill is the first man I recall outside my immediate family. Peculiarly, although I knew Bill to be associated with Dad, I don't recall ever seeing them together. Indeed, Bill would only ever come to our house on those weekday evenings when Dad would be out collecting insurance premiums from his customers.

Possessing a charismatic personality with a frivolous streak, Bill appeared to be everything that my dad was not. With his warmth and friendliness and inclination to act the giddy-goat, Bill embodied the figure of fun character to whom children would naturally gravitate. Indeed, he would leave Dee and me in fits of laughter each time he'd tell us to “park our bums.” Although of a similarly slender build, Bill was slightly taller than Dad and had rather greasy looking greying hair and a pointed nose. Also unlike Dad, Bill was a heavy smoker and not as smarty turned out. However, his charm lay in his exuberance rather than his appearance and Dee and I were very much taken with him. We were not the only ones, as Mum seemed quite taken by Bill, too. Unbeknown to me, I was about to learn how my mother truly felt about this marvellously captivating man.

Just a few months shy of her fifth birthday, by late 1975, Dee had begun school at nearby Horn Park Infants'. A year later marked the first time I'd be able to recall Mum and I walking her the short distance to the school. When I say walked, I meant that Mum and Dee did all the walking while I remained firmly ensconced in my buggy. At the age of three, my legs were far too small to be able to climb the steep hill leading to the forbidding looking school building situated at the top.

Having left Dee in the charge of the staff of Horn Park on this one particular day, Mum turned my buggy around before heading back the way we came. Even more terrifying than going up the hill was going down it. My fear of descending such a steep hill and the sight of the busy road at the bottom was such that the experience would give me nightmares for years after. Yet, these particular dreams were characterised by my mother letting go of my buggy, which hurtled down the hill before careening into traffic. At this point I'd suddenly awaken. To what extent these dreams led to my persistent bed-wetting, I cannot say, however, more often than not during the early part of my life I'd wake up with my pyjamas, sheets and mattress soaked through.

As we neared the bottom of the hill, rather than turn right and head for home, instead Mum crossed the road and pushed my buggy through a gate and along a garden path. Looking up, I saw a yellow door with the number 249 above it. No sooner had Mum rung the doorbell than the door opened and there stood Bill. Following his greeting, Mum unfastened the safety straps on my buggy before lifting me up and taking me inside. Leading me into Bill's living room, Mum suddenly disappeared following which in came Bill. As I looked up, the towering man before me suddenly produced a brown paper bag and handed it to me then left the room, closing the door behind him. Opening the bag, I reached inside and pulled out a game containing a blue coloured plastic toy handgun and two table tennis balls.

With the apprehension of finding myself all alone in a strange place, I didn't bother to break open the plastic and cardboard packaging of the toy before I opened the door in search of my mum. With neither Mum nor Bill anywhere in sight, I made towards the stairs and began to climb them. Just then, I heard the sound of muffled voices. As I reached the top of the stairs, the voices grew more distinct. I followed the sound to a door at the end of the landing and, reaching up, I pulled on the handle. There before me removing what remained of their clothing were Mum and Bill, who then climbed into bed. Thinking they were playing some sort of game, I immediately took off all my clothes and climbed into the bottom of the bed where, fortunately, I must have fallen asleep, as I do not recall any more after that.

While as a three year old I couldn't have understood then that my mother and Bill were having sex, those images would endure and be revisited at a time when I was old enough to understand what they were really doing. Unbeknown to my mother, she had given birth to a child who could recall memories in vivid detail from the age of two onwards. Unbeknown to me, this particular memory was just the beginning and served as a taste of the kind of selfish hedonism to which my mother would subject my sisters and me over the years to come.

Indeed, Babylon was merely the first stop on a roller-coaster ride I had no business being on. I wouldn't know it then but by that time I was already trapped; trapped on a ride driven by my mother, a ride that hurtled from place to place, from one upheaval to the next, and with no idea where we were headed or how to get off.

So, back to the power of music to stir memories. I'd also come to learn in time how for each chaotic episode there would be a song, or songs. In the case of Bill, there were three such tunes my mother associated with him which would form parts of the soundtrack to her dissolute life. As for me, whenever I hear 'If You Leave Me Now' by Chicago, 'My Girl, Bill' by Jim Stafford, and 'Don't Give Up On Us' by David Soul, I'm three-years-old once again, back on that roller-coaster ride yelling at the top of my lungs to be let off, a cry to which no-one ever responded.

Not long after mum's secret rendezvous with Bill, Dad found out they'd been having an affair. To this day I don't know how he learned of mum's infidelity. However, Dad left Dee and me in no doubt that Mum had done something wrong when he lashed out at her in front of us. Despite the fact that his children were in the room, Dad rained blows on Mum while Dee and I stood by, terrified, helpless and sobbing. I wish I could say this was the only time as a child that I'd witness Dad beating Mum up, alas, I cannot. While he may have relieved his frustration towards her, time would reveal how thrashing my mother did nothing to deter her future behaviour. Furthermore, by lashing out at her in the way he did, Dad had begun to sow future seeds of resentment within me; seeds which, once germinated, would pit us against each other and foment the kind of mutual animosity from which our relationship would never recover.

On her part, Mum had embarked on a course of conduct which would alienate her not only from Dad's extended family but, eventually, her own. Dad's younger sister, Jackie, whose husband had left her following an affair with Dad's first wife, had never taken to Mum, regarding her as devious and incapable of telling the truth. Mum cooked her own goose the day she telephoned Auntie Jackie to ask if she'd be Bill's escort to the annual Prudential staff party. Smelling a rat straight away, Auntie Jackie flatly refused and told Mum in no uncertain terms that she knew what her game was. One more incident would seal Mum's fate with her sister-in-law and soon enough that moment came.

For someone who thought nothing of having sex with another man in the presence of her child, anything is within their capabilities. Therefore, when Auntie Jackie revealed to me years later the events that unfolded one afternoon around the time of Bill, I wasn't at all surprised. At that time, Auntie Jackie shared the family home at Campshill Road with her mother and father and her two teenage sons, Adam and Nicky, providing care for them all. Relying heavily on the financial support of her estranged husband, Jim, Auntie Jackie received six pounds per week towards the upkeep of both boys.

Following Jim's weekly visit to drop off the six pounds, Dad, Mum, Dee and I came to visit. Within minutes of us leaving, Auntie Jackie went to check her purse and found the six pounds missing and broke down in tears. When her father, Harry, heard her crying he asked her what was wrong. Furious to learn of the betrayal, no sooner had Auntie Jackie revealed the theft to her dad than Harry rang our home and demanded to know who had taken it. Dad in turn confronted mum who revealed three-year-old me to be the culprit.

Fortuitously, my cousin Nicky had witnessed the theft with his own eyes, revealing that he'd seen my mum take it. Humiliated and suitably embarrassed, Dad drove straight back round to Campshill Road to return the pilfered money to its rightful owner. Consequently, to the accusations against mum in Auntie Jackie's eyes of being devious and incapable of telling the truth, the charge of thief could be added.

Despite what time would reveal to be an almost relentless succession of irresponsible and erratic behaviour, following the Bill Stone saga, Mum and Dad would enjoy something of a reconciliation. Following their reunion, in an act which was dubbed 'the baby to save the marriage', Mum fell pregnant again. In September, 1977, my younger sister, Saskia, or Sas as she came to be called, was born.

Prior to Sas' birth, during the summer of that year, we moved the short distance of less than a mile from Westdean Avenue to a new home on Guibal Road in Lee. Situated at number 32, our house was actually located in a cul-de-sac off Guibal Road. With its kitchen on the ground floor, living room and Mum and Dad's bedroom on the first floor and our bedrooms at the top, our house at Guibal Road had a very topsy-turvy feel. Like our previous house, this too was three-bedroomed, however, all the rooms in our new home were noticeably bigger.

So, for now, by late 1977, the Hills family had moved home and gained another member in the form of little Sas. In addition, I'd joined Dee at Horn Park, starting in the infants for half-days for the first term, while Dee began her first year at Horn Park primary. Signalling the calm before the oncoming storm, the mood at home at that time felt particularly joyful. Central to the jubilation was of course our younger sibling. For one of the few times that I can recall, my parents appeared happy and united. There would be no better example of their joy than when they'd stand approximately ten feet apart from each other and throw Sas to and fro between them. While the little girl giggled with delight, I held my breath, afraid they might drop her. Alas, the joy of Sas' birth would be short lived as the period following her arrival would see a sudden escalation in my mother's behaviour, which took on a darker and more unwholesome dimension.

Ordinarily a source of great fun for children, bath times for Dee and me of a Sunday night were no different. Following the hilarity of pulling our shampoo thickened hair into bunny ears and sliding around a drained bath, we laid across Mum's lap so she could rub talcum powder into our skin. However, it was following bath time that my mother began to both cup our genitals in addition to which she'd pull our buttocks wide apart before sinking her teeth into one of our cheeks. While this particular habit of grabbing our genitals originated following bath times, the biting was not a new occurrence and had in fact begun while we lived at Westdean Avenue.

While I'm well aware of how playfulness between parents and their children can take many different forms, any kind of activity which causes a child harm cannot be considered playful. Even if my mother's original intent in what followed was playful, it did not end that way. Continuing an act which I later learned she inflicted on her own much younger siblings, Mum took to biting Dee and me on our arms.

With me being the smaller child, I bore the brunt of the assaults each time my mother scooped me up from the lounge floor where I'd be playing, hold me to her chest and begin biting my arms. However, this was not playful biting, as Mum would sink her teeth deep into my skin. The depth of her bite was such that when she finally let me go, a wailing and quivering mess, through my tears I'd look down at my arms and see teeth marks embedded in my skin. Adding insult to injury, with my pleas to stop whenever she bit me going ignored, I'd began hitting Mum in the face. As if to punish me for defending myself, in response she hit me back many times harder.

Alas, I wish I could say that my father was on hand to protect us but I cannot, even though he knew what had been going on. On a number of occasions during this time I'd arrive along with Dad and Dee at the home of Auntie Grace with bite marks on my arm. With no confirmation needed on my part as to who was responsible, Auntie Grace told me to tell my mum that if she bites me again, she would come round and bite her. My teenage cousin, Adam, would find me in similar circumstances with bite marks up my arm. Offering me his comfort after having found me sobbing on my bed on one particular occasion, Adam reported back to his mum how she must've really hurt me.

However, gratuitous biting would pale in comparison with what came next which constituted the single most terrifying moment of my young life. Few who recall the most severe punishment they ever endured would forget what prompted it. While I had it in myself to be a naughty child, still to this day I cannot account for my mother's actions on the day in question. Yet, the shock of being grabbed by her so suddenly and so forcefully was such that before I knew what had happened, I was supine on her bedroom floor with a pillow hurtling towards my face. The next thing I knew everything went black and immediately I began to kick and scream. While Mum pressed down on the pillow I continued to struggle in absolute terror. In what must've been no more than a minute yet felt like an eternity, Mum suddenly let go of the pillow before running out of the room in tears. Feeling dazed and confused, I sat up and my tears began flowing with abandon. After having calmed down, I brushed sweaty hair from my face and made for the lounge, tears still rolling down my cheeks.

What happened next goes against the human instinct for self preservation, yet, in the context of a child's bond with a parent makes perfect sense. At that very moment, the only thing I wanted to do was be comforted, by my mother, the very person who had hurt me so brutally. Curiously, I'd witness the same inclination in other children many years later as part of my work in residential children's homes. Placed many miles away for their own protection from parents who only meant them harm, there were those among our young charges who'd abscond back to the very people who posed the greatest risk to their well-being. I wouldn't know it then but in a little over ten years time I'd find myself in similar circumstances to those children. For now, in need of her consolation, I went into the lounge and approached my mum who was slumped in a chair, crawled under her arm and curled up beside her.

While the extent of my mother's violence would never again reach such an extreme as this, as long as we were small enough to be treated in such a way, she would continue to do as her mood dictated. Although not as harrowing, my mother would show a similar level of aggression the day I came home as a six-year-old smelling of smoke after having had a cigarette shoved in my mouth by a group of older boys who collared me while out riding my bike. Grabbing me with one hand and a piece of off-cut wood in the other, my mother made me hold my arm out and thrashed me across the wrist with it. While doing a kind of war dance and watching through tears as my wrist turned purple, I managed to tell Mum that the older boys shoved the cigarette in my mouth and told me to suck on it. Despite my confession, Mum continued thrashing me for not knocking on someone's door to tell them what the boys were trying to make me do. Needless to say that such a suggestion did not occur to me while surrounded by a group of menacing boys twice my height.

Although like mine, her perspective and experiences are uniquely hers, both Dee and I endured similar assaults against us at that time and also subsequently. Even the most minor of provocations were met with a totally disproportionate level of force. Indeed, my mother would think nothing of picking up a pair of scissors and throwing them at us. A similarly favoured projectile took the form of her wooden sole Dr. Scholl sandals while on other occasions she would take to us with the kind of black flex cord which powered a portable cassette player before proceeding to whip us, prompting another war type dance. Coupled with the ongoing biting of our bottoms and arms and the groping, Dee and I found ourselves on our guard very early on, having also learned quickly how to duck when some projectile came flying our way.

Although it's true to say that abuse takes many forms, the neglect that Dee and I would experience in later years also had its roots during this time. My mother, while wanting a comfortable home in which to live, took no pride in maintaining it and did the minimum she could get away with to fulfil our basic needs. With Dad being the kind of man who expected his dinner on the table when he came home from work, Mum ensured that she at least fulfilled that obligation. Any others, such as tending house, were done sporadically and reluctantly. Indeed, two such glaring examples at that time were the condition of our toilets and my bed sheets. In the case of the former, our toilets became so thick with wee and poo stained limescale that on the rare occasion any extended family members came to visit, they refused to use the toilet. As for my bed sheets, which I'd soil nightly, instead of replacing them with fresh ones, my mother took to placing my bedside lamp underneath the sheet and opening my bedroom window. Consequently, I went to sleep each night to the acidic odour of a urine stinking sheet only to wake up in the morning and find I'd soiled it anew.

Furthermore, a similar odour would have hit anyone in the face who dared to open the laundry cupboard on the ground floor, as urine soaked sheets were left to rot for months on end. However, my mother was not without a capacity to show care and attention. Indeed, she was never more attentive towards us than at Christmas, when she'd pull out all the stops to buy us the Christmas presents we wanted, and when we were poorly and off sick from school. Yet, that is where the extent of my mother's care ended and in the not too distant future, Dee and I would find ourselves alone, far away in another country where we had to fend for our own selves.

Despite the trials and tribulations of home life, nothing made me happier at that time than riding off for hours on my Raleigh Budgie bicycle. Such was the way of parenting back in the 1970s that children would play out for hours on end without their parents knowing where they were or what they were up to. Therefore, I could ride far away on my bike for as long as I wanted and so I freely indulged my singular and independent streak. However, being a fast runner like Dee, we also enjoyed the opportunity of playing out with the other kids of Guibal Road, indulging in such street games as British bulldog, hide and seek, knockdown ginger and three bad eggs.

Interestingly, it was about this time in the late 1970s when the most unexpected and thrilling moment of my life thus far occurred. Out on my bike one sunny day, I came to the end of Guibal Road as usual, poised to turn left before coasting down the hilly Winn Road. For some unknown reason, I suddenly turned right. Just then, as I headed past a small green I caught sight of a boy roughly my age playing alone on the grass. Drawn to him by the fact that I hadn't seen him before, and wouldn't thereafter, I stopped and said hello. Having exchanged pleasantries and a mutual desire to want play, my new friend invited me to his house to see his newborn brother. Being well in practice at cooing to newborn babies, I cheerfully accepted. To my surprise, my friend's house, which could be seen from the green, was situated directly across the busy main road of Burnt Ash Hill. Within minutes we were peering into the cot of his baby brother, who stared contentedly back at us as we shook the mobiles suspended above his cot.

Just then, the sound of heavy footsteps distracted me and as I turned towards the bedroom door, in bounded an enormous man, naked except for a towel in his hand which he used to dry the back of his head. Clearly fresh from bathing, my friend's dad stopping briefly to see what we were doing before continuing to dry his mop of curly red hair. With the exception of my Dad I hadn't seen another man naked. Yet, this man looked decidedly different to my dad and I couldn't take my eyes off him as he continued to dry his hair. Each backwards and forwards motion caused the large muscles on his raised arms to jiggle. His hairy chest had a broadness to it quite unlike my father's while his large penis dangled proudly between muscular thighs and I found myself completely transfixed.

For the rest of that day and on many occasions since, I've revisited that moment which has remained so vivid in my mind. Although at the age of six I couldn't possibly have understood why it had excited me in the way it did, there would come a time in the future where I could relate an awareness of my orientation back to this one event. Furthermore, I'd become aware in time of the absence of similar feelings of intrigue and excitement about the naked female form. For now, however, I just wanted to be a happy boy, ride my bike and be free. Alas, until such time as my mother was no longer a part of my life, that would not be possible. You'd think I'd have learnt that by now, wouldn't you?

Standing behind me in the bathroom as he fastened the blue and gold striped tie around my neck, Dad prepared me for my first day at Horn Park Infants School. Until such time as I learned to tie my own tie, I relied on Dad to do it for me. To the feeling of the breath from his nose on the back of my neck and the scent of Old Spice, I stood as still as I could until he'd finished. As smart as I must've looked in my new grey shorts and blue v-neck sweater, I dreaded the prospect of my first day at school.

With my brown and orange faux-leather satchel flapping at my side, Dad led me by the hand up a set of steps and into the main building. The contrast in the light was such that it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dingy concourse before us. A peculiar musty smell in the air I would later learn originated from the books on the bookcases bordering a carpeted area to one side. Standing tall in the corner among the bookcases was the object so commonplace in schools in the '70s and '80s. Concealed behind a cabinet atop four chrome legs and wheeled feet was the school television.

Having slowed us down with my gawping, Dad pulled me to him and led me in the same direction he must've led Dee two years earlier. Stopping outside a closed door, Dad knocked and waited. Just then, out strode the terrifying figure of Miss Norton, the school headmistress. Austere in both her dress and manner, Miss Norton cut an altogether severe, no nonsense character. It was while looking up at this fearsome looking lady before me that I eyed Miss Norton's most peculiar characteristic. Sitting just below her hairline on one side of her forehead was a purple birth mark. Resembling a smaller version of that belonging to future leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, Miss Norton's birth mark immediately captivated me. However, I'd soon become distracted from it the moment Dad let go of my hand and left me in the charge of Miss Norton. While tears streamed down my face, Miss Norton lead me down a long corridor to the classroom of my new teacher, an equally stern and forbidding looking woman by the name of Miss Taylor.

Despite being the youngest child in my class, before long I had settled in fairly easily among my new classmates. All the teachers, with Miss Norton at the helm, ran a consistently tight ship. Their no nonsense approach to thwarting misbehaviour while offering little in the way of soothing words to a distressed child would characterise my school experience both then and in the years that followed.

The sternness of the teachers aside, school would become a perpetual struggle for me on account of what I came to recognise as an inability to concentrate for too long. Despite moments of almost zen like focus and fixation on a particular task, from which I could not break until I'd finished it, on the whole my focus in class remained poor. In later years this would manifest itself in my disrupting lessons by seizing the opportunity to play the clown and the class comedian. Little did I realise then that I'd be merely emulating at school the role I'd end up falling into at home.

The difficulties of the classroom notwithstanding, like most children, the place where I felt happiest was in the playground. Remaining one of the smallest children in my class throughout school, I found myself blessed with winged feet. My ability to be able to outrun children much older than me stood me in good stead. In addition to being swift of foot, I had a tendency to be equally swift of mouth, taking great delight in taunting my elders, whom I'd invariably outrun whenever they tried to catch me and duff me up.

In a similar manner to the classroom, the place where I felt most ill at ease was in morning assembly. As was the case in most schools around the country, assembly took place in the school hall. There, children sat cross-legged in rows on hard, varnished parquet floors. However, the discomfort of the floor paled in comparison to what happened each time assembly got under way. No sooner had Miss Norton begun to address the hall than I'd experience a sudden swelling sensation in my shorts. In a state of confusion, I immediately pressed down on the lump with both thumbs in an attempt to make it go away. For fear of revealing my embarrassment to those around me, I kept my head bowed until such time as the lump began to subside. Suffice to say that until those unfortunate episodes subsided, I found myself dreading morning assembly.

Nonetheless, with my first year at Horn Park coming to a close in the summer of 1978, I looked forward to showing Mum and Dad my work during parents' evening. However, it was not my parents' reaction to my sloping handwriting on the unlined page of my exercise book that I'd remember about my first parents' evening. No. This particular evening was more memorable for the first of many audacious acts on my mother's part of petty larceny.

With parents' evening having concluded, we made our way down the corridor leading to the dingy concourse and the way out. Before reaching the end of the corridor, in the last classroom, we passed a pretty array of whicker baskets. Just then, my mother darted into the classroom and seized a basket before rejoining us in the corridor. Despite my sense that she'd done something she probably shouldn't have, the effortlessness with which she acted made her behaviour seem strangely acceptable. Yet, I wouldn't realise until later on just how conditioned I was fast becoming by Mum's behaviour.

When my mother took a dislike to someone there'd be very little they could do to redeem themselves. From certain individuals to specific groups and from the old to the young, my mother could dislike someone at will. However, this often worked both ways each time someone learned that despite being charming to their face, she'd been talking about them behind their back. They in turn would end up distancing themselves from her. Indeed, there would come a time in the not too distant future where, on account of her behaviour, my mother would alienate herself not only from Dad's side of the family but her own as well. Unsurprisingly, there would never be a time in her life when she'd have any real friends.

During this period in the late 1970s, events transpired to set the family tone in a way which would endure throughout the 1980s. Aside from these, three specific events occurring around this time I recall with nothing else except shame and regret. Taken together, they provide a stark illustration of how my mother's behaviour had begun to influence my own. The first involved my discovering the whereabouts of the keys to my father's cash box from which I subsequently stole a small sum of money. What I'd fail to realise as a foolish six-year-old boy was that I had taken money paid to him by his customers for their monthly insurance premiums; money he would have to repay from his own pocket.

While stealing from my own father remained an isolated occurrence, so to was an incident which followed, although that in no way absolves me of any wrongdoing. Whether influenced by the so-called Battle of Lewisham, which saw five-hundred members of the National Front attempt to march from New Cross to nearby Lewisham in August 1977, my mother began to openly express a revulsion of black people, referring to them pejoratively as coons. To my shame I found myself one particular day facing the wall outside headmaster Mr. Thomas's office for having used an even more revolting slur against a mixed-race girl in my class. Again, thankfully, this too remained an isolated occurrence. As previously mentioned, even when my mother took a dislike to someone, being averse to confrontation as she was, she'd be nothing but charming to their face. Two examples from this time were our next door neighbour, a rather haughty Margot Leadbetter type called Muriel and my form teacher at the time, a lady by the name of Miss Costaras. In Muriel's case, I suspect that her crime was her snooty upper-class manner, something to which my mother aspired and of which, it is more likely than not, she harboured feelings of jealousy. Further damning Muriel in Mum's eyes was how she referred to her baby daughter. Rather than calling her Caroline, Muriel referred to her daughter by the nickname “Corky” for which Mum mocked her behind closed doors. As for Miss Costaras, this surly and unfortunate woman would get the treatment each time Mum referred to her as “horse-face” courtesy of her equine features.

While my mother remained charming in the presence of those she privately disliked, my half-sister, Leigh, remained the one person outside our immediate family to whom Mum would be openly spiteful. Unbeknown to me at the time, I myself would unwittingly become party to my mother's spite towards her step-daughter. Not until the early to mid 1980s would I learn of the existence of Leigh's, my father's daughter from his first marriage. This would only come about one July day when he received a birthday card saying 'to dear dad' and signed from Leigh. Dad never spoke of Leigh and it wasn't until March, 1989, that I'd meet Leigh properly, albeit under unfortunate circumstances. It would be another twenty years hence that I'd sit down with her as an adult and discover the full extent of my mother's wickedness towards her.

As Dee and I would have daily proof, my mother had very little patience and care for children. Therefore, it came as no real surprise years later when she admitted to her dislike of them. As mentioned previously, this is not to say that Mum was immune to random acts of kindness. Indeed, she was never more attentive than when we were off sick from school, or more generous than at Christmas. She would even go so far on one occasion to surprise Dee, who'd gone into hospital to have her tonsils removed. With Dee's hospital admission coinciding with the popularity of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, Mum hurriedly cobbled together a scrap book of newspaper cuttings featuring John Travolta, a favourite of Dee's at the time. Furthermore, Mum would go on to exhibit similar generosity towards her children at certain moments in the future. However, given the context, her generosity perhaps owed more to a need to atone for her behaviour than a desire to do selfless good.

Despite having experienced first-hand how spiteful my mother could be towards children, the disclosures made during my meeting with Leigh left me shocked. Without a hint of malice in her voice as she spoke, Leigh explained how, as an eight-year-old girl, she would take two buses from her home in Kidbrooke to visit her father at his flat in Bennett Park, Blackheath. Following her knock at his door, my mother answered and informed Leigh that her father wasn't home. This turned out to be untrue, with the lie being confirmed to Leigh by Dad in a subsequent telephone call that he had in fact been at the flat when she called.

As if this first revelation were not appalling enough, what followed would be even more reprehensible. Indeed, Leigh went on to explain that on those occasions when she was able to see her father, they'd often walk along the street holding hands with my mother following behind. In an act of particular cruelty, Mum would take to slapping their hands in an attempt to break the bond between father and daughter. It wouldn't be too long before Mum would actually succeed in permanently severing the already fragile bond between them. This came on the day when Leigh, as a ten-year-old girl, received a phone call from her father to say that in order to keep the peace at home, he could no longer see her. Despite the devastating news, Leigh made consistent attempts at regular intervals throughout the seventies to contact her father by phone. These were similarly unsuccessful each time my mother answered and told Leigh that Dad was out and to stop calling. This is where I came in the day I sat with my colouring book on the bottom step of the stairs next to the telephone table at our home in Guibal Road.

The phone call which came this particular day would otherwise have been unremarkable had my mother not berated the caller by name before telling them not to call again. Being unaware of the existence of my half-sister at that time, I believed the caller to have been a male by the name of Lee. When the phone rang again, my mother told me to fetch my descant recorder and remove the mouthpiece. Following this, she said that if the phone rang again I must blow on the mouthpiece as hard as I could down the phone. Then, if that didn't work, she told me to lower my voice and announce that 'Lee' had come through to switchboard of the local police station. It was not until Leigh mentioned her attempts to phone her father that I realised I'd been used as my mother's stooge. Although I could not have been held responsible for my part in such a deplorable episode, this did not prevent me from feeling obliged to apologise to Leigh subsequently for any hurt that I'd caused.

While there'd be many times in the no too distant future when I'd find myself once again a stooge for my mother, the stooge in what can only be described as an utterly repulsive act of depravity this time involved my baby sister, Sas. With Dee and I already on our guard against various airborne objects hurtling towards us in addition to the threat of being mercilessly bitten, came perhaps the most disturbing act of all. Beginning during her nappy change, Sas often ran naked around the lounge until she had a clean nappy put on. However, before then my mother would scoop her baby daughter up and, with Sas's back against Mum's chest, she'd pull her legs back, thereby fully exposing Sas's vulva and anus. Thinking it was all some sort of game, the giggling baby then found herself thrust genitals first into the face of whoever, between Dee or me, happened to be close by. With our faces covered in the revolting smell of our sister's unwashed genitals we'd rush in tears to the bathroom and frantically scrub our face clean. Such humiliation would continue until such time as our reflexes improved and Sas became too heavy for Mum to lift.

As for Dad, it would be his and Dee's mutual love of football which formed the basis of their bond as the 1970s drew to a close. Despite my disinterest in football, I'd often feel left out every Saturday afternoon that Dad and Dee went to see Charlton Athletic play at home. On the one occasion when Dad did take me, I misbehaved to such an extent that he vowed never to take me again. However, when he took us with him to see the greyhound racing at Catford dogs, that was a different matter. Indeed, the deafening roar of the spectators each time the dogs were released from their traps thrilled us immensely. Likewise, the discarded programs lying around on the ground like snow, which Dee and I would kick up and then watch as they fluttered back down to the ground as we left the stadium.

Nonetheless, by taking Dee to the football, Mum convinced herself that Dad meant to deliberately exclude me. For me, consolation lay in the records Mum would play as we sat together and listened. While football provided the bonding element for Dad and Dee, music provided the same for Mum and me. To my delight, Mum went out and bought me a radiogram, which quickly became my most treasured possession. To the song 'The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers' I'd bounce up and down on my bed and sing along, pretending to be Tigger. Peculiarly, having experienced more alone time with Mum than did Dee, and by now aged seven, I found myself becoming more attuned to her moods and emotions.

For the first time during the summer of 1980, I sensed in my mother the kind of discontent and restlessness which would cause so much disruption to our family throughout the 1980s. Not only would the new decade see us make a number of regular house moves, it would also see us move abroad in pursuit of the kind of happiness which always seemed to elude my mother. With her perception that there were too many black people in suburbia, she began to openly protest at having to stay in London and suddenly proposed that we move to the country. The hand of fate would play a part around this time one Saturday in Lewisham. There, an event took place which my mother would leverage and bring about our move out of London at the end of 1980 for good.

With my first year at Horn Park Primary School fast approaching, Mum, Dee and I headed one Saturday to Lewisham precinct to buy our new school uniforms. As we walked, Mum suddenly stopped to retrieve her purse from her bag. No sooner had she reached in than three black youths ripped her bag from her hand and ran out of the main entrance. The next time we saw Mum's bag it had been handed in to her local bank, minus the contents. While being the victim of a snatch theft must have been unpleasant enough, Mum wasted no time in leveraging the youths' race in order to support her case for moving away. In addition to this, she would also invoke the name of her good friend, Pauline.

As stated previously, my mother would navigate life making very few friends along the way. Therefore, it came as something of a surprise when she began to speak of moving down to Maidstone in Kent to be nearer this never before heard of lady by the name of Pauline. It would transpire that Pauline and Mum had attended school together. However, we had never met Pauline and, unsurprisingly, following our move to Maidstone we would meet Pauline only once. Nevertheless, in November, 1980, we moved the forty-six mile distance from south-east London to West Kent to a village to the south of Maidstone named Coxheath.

Sparing a thought for Dad, while he managed to gain a transfer with the Prudential with relative ease, London had always been his home and that of his ageing relatives. Indeed, despite our move to Kent, we would make regular return trips with him to see our aunties, Liz, Grace and Jackie. What these forays made clear was that Dad never wanted to leave London and only agreed to do so to appease my mother. Unfortunately for him, he would find himself in a similar dilemma less than six years later while torn between staying in or leaving the UK. Alas, he had begun to make a rod for his own back and it appeared there was little he wouldn't do to please my mother, regardless of the cost to his health and his wallet.

For now, having settled into our new home in Coxheath, Dee and I were enrolled in the nearby Junior School while Sas followed into the infants two years later. As for Mum, she was finally away from London and also the proud owner of a brand-new split level cooker she insisted be installed in our new home. Knowing that he'd be the main beneficiary of her demand, Dad was only too happy to oblige her. Yet, it remained to be seen for how long following this current move my mother would remain happy. Alas, we hadn't been in Maidstone for long before she and my father continued in earnest something which had begun in London. Between them they were about to embark on the kind of corrosive favouritism which would pit me against my father and create a mutual hostility from which our relationship would never recover.

Within weeks of our move to Georgian Drive, an event occurred which would shock the world. During the seventies, there were two particular images I'd consistently see in newspapers and on television. The first featured a thin man with round wire-rimmed glasses while the other featured an altogether captivating blonde-haired lady. While too young at first to know who they were, their images impressed upon me a sense of how very important they must've been to a lot of people. Tragically, I'd see the man again on the front page of Dad's copy of The Daily Mirror when it landed on our doormat on 10th December, 1980. As for the lady, I'd find myself similarly saddened three and a half years later to learn of her death from cancer, such was the enduring popularity of British legends Diana Dors and John Lennon.

It seemed rather ironic considering the difference in purity between the London and Kentish air that within weeks of our move to Maidstone I'd be diagnosed with asthma. Almost overnight, I began having regular attacks which left me severely short of breath. Furthermore, the greater the attack, the more hysterical I became which in turn worsened the attack. My request to Mum to call a doctor would almost always be met with the response that a doctor wouldn't make a home visit for a simple asthma attack. Instead, Mum would resort to sitting me on the floor following which we'd link hands and after placing her feet on my chest she'd begin vigorously rubbing up and down. Alas, Mum's home remedy was no match for a steroid inhaler upon which I'd remain dependent until well into my twenties.

Although my difficulties with concentration and focus in class persisted, I wasted no time in making friends. Chief among them was a similarly short-legged fellow with boyish good-looks by the name of Dale. With our class and every other throughout the school separated into designated houses for sports and competitions, being in the same house as Dale, I naturally gravitated towards him.

In addition, I found myself before long drawn to an otherwise nondescript blonde-haired blue-eyed girl by the name of Elizabeth. As well as being a fellow recorder player, Elizabeth had her own horse. Peculiarly, I have no idea why Elizabeth in particular became the focus of my attention among all the girls in my class. With me being completely uninterested in football, the girls were the only ones at playtime with whom I could play. Yet, Elizabeth's tendency to wet herself in PE then put her hand up to be excused before rushing off in a humiliated state and leaving a pool of urine behind further endeared her to me. Why she didn't put her hand up before she wet herself, I'll never know. However, when Elizabeth started going out with Dale, I began to feel proper pangs of jealousy.

Our house at Georgian Drive was the first of two houses in which my mother insisted on having a split-level cooker installed. Ironically, the kitchen would be the room in which she'd spend the least amount of time. While she knew she could not avoid having to cook my father's dinner each lunchtime, my mother would not prepare anything for Dee, Sas and me for tea beyond a sandwich, a packet of crisps and a Cadbury's mini-roll. However, come the weekend, we'd sit together as a family for lunch. On these days we ate solely the kind of meals that Dad would eat, such as liver and bacon, beef stew and dumplings or sausage casserole. Never one to rush his food, and inclined to read his newspaper while he ate, Dad would always be the last one to leave the table.

Christmas 1980 marked the only time Mum's parents, whom we referred to as Nanny and Grandad, came to us for Christmas dinner. Although we'd visit Nanny and Granddad a number of times throughout the year, it was rare for them to visit us. Whichever way around it was, Nanny always greeted her daughter by remarking on her weight. Moreover, whether it was her intention to antagonise my mother further, Nanny would spend an inordinate amount of time praising Mum's younger sister, Kathleen, stating repeatedly how she had a heart of gold. Despite the festivities, Nanny then made a point of cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom, implying that if she didn't do it then it wouldn't get done.

Bearing in mind her daughter's lack of house pride, of course, Nanny was right. However, when considered in the context of her comments about Mum's weight and the high praise reserved for Kathleen, Mum saw Nanny's comments, perhaps justifiably, as thinly-veiled put downs. The lack of genuine affection for my mother by her own appeared obvious, despite Mum's attempts to try to please her. Dad, on his part, would always refer to Nanny as Mum, despite being only ten years her junior.

Unlike his wife, Granddad appeared gentle and kind and not at all the strict disciplinarian that my mother described. Regarding Granddad, Mum described a man who would take his belt to his children without a moment's hesitation. Furthermore, she recalled how her father would hit her in the face and make her mouth bleed while her mother stood by and laughed. By now, this man cut a much softened figure and seemed to enjoy nothing more than cooking, maintaining a comfortable home and keeping his wife happy.

On the other hand, with Aunty Joyce, Nanny's sister, living upstairs in their shared house, it's true to say that a browbeaten Granddad often found himself ganged up on. In less than four years I myself would witness the fury of both women when they'd reveal their true feelings about my mother. Yet, Granddad's warmth endeared me to him, despite the awkwardness of our goodbyes. To Mum, Dee and Sas he'd invite them with outstretched arms to give him a banger (a kiss). To me, he'd merely pat me on the head and declare that boys don't kiss.

If it's generally true that families share a similar sense of humour, it's fair to say that ours was straight out of the bawdy Carry On mould. Music and comedy appeared to have the effect on my mother of lightening her mood and lifting her spirits. In addition, by this time I'd begun to develop the kind of quick-witted repartee she found appealing and which made her laugh. Consequently, our shared sense of humour and similar taste in music and film brought me firmly into her favour. The favouritism, such as it was, that my mother began to show me at this time she justified on the basis that she was merely compensating for what she felt I wasn't getting from my father. Even at age seven, I possessed the kind of characteristics which appealed to my mother and which she had not found in her husband, specifically the capacity to make her laugh.

Predictably, with my mother's focus firmly on me instead of my father, I began to find myself the target of his ire. This usually manifested itself by him hitting me around the head repeatedly for often trivial reasons. Indeed, the cat and dog quarrelling which took place between Dee and I provided him with the perfect excuse to intervene at the earliest opportunity and begin belting me repeatedly around the head.

As if the blows themselves were not enough, the signet ring Dad wore on his little finger would often catch me, resulting in a cut to my head. Tellingly, my father only hit me around the head and never Dee or Sas. Somewhat hypocritically, my mother, who was still very much in the habit of launching scissors and similar projectiles at us, warned my father against consistently hitting me around the head. However, it's entirely plausible that he continued to do so in order to get back at her for making me the focus of her attention rather than him. Upping the ante, my mother would begin to belittle him openly by called him a “weed” and remarked on how he wasn't happy unless he was “mithering about something”. To his complaints about his sleepless nights or upset stomachs she'd dismiss them as being all in the mind and express thinly-veiled regret that he'd likely outlive us all.

Moreover, there were consequences for poor Dee, who would also be brought into the fray. It's fair to say that Dee regarded me as every inch the annoying little brother. It's also true to say that I sensed an indifference from Dee towards me and my merciless teasing of her was often a childish attempt on my part to gain her attention. However, Mum began to act towards Dee in the same way that Dad had towards me each time that with little provocation she'd hit Dee. Adding insult to injury, Mum would often criticise Dee for what remained of her south London accent, cruelly mocking her for sounding like a “fish-wife”, and a “coal-man's daughter”. These divisions would only deepen on all sides with each passing year until they'd reach the seemingly inevitable breaking point towards the end of the decade. In the meantime, Mum doubled down and ensured each Christmas that my presents were laid out on the lounge settee while Dee's and Sas's were crammed into the two matching armchairs.

On his part, Dad also doubled down in his behaviour towards me. In an attempt to belittle and intimidate me, Dad would often come into the bathroom after I'd gone to the toilet or blown my nose to check how much toilet paper I'd used. On those occasions where he considered the amount I'd used gratuitous, he'd resort to calling me a “waster”. Next, if I ate more than one sandwich biscuit and one plain one he'd brand me a “gannet”. Moreover, on the odd occasion where I accidentally broke something he'd yell and call me a “clown” or a “toe-rag”.

However, I was not then and nor since, someone who would allow myself to be easily intimidated. Consequently, Dad and I would enter into running battles as to who'd have the last word, which invariably ended in him losing his patience and hitting me around the head once again. Yet, I would not roll over and his hostility towards me not only strengthened my resolve but served to deepen my resentment towards him. This resentment would become fixed eighteen months later following an event which threatened to tear already fragile bonds to pieces. Indeed, rather than address the favouritism problem, my father's hostility towards me merely intensified it and had the predictable consequence of bringing my mother and I closer together.

Keeping pace with one another, the emerging conflicts and the restlessness stirring once more within my mother set the tone for what lay ahead during the next few years. After only eighteen months at Georgian Drive my parents suddenly sold up. At my mother's insistence were about to move for the third time in five years although this time into rented accommodation on the other side of Coxheath. Yet, the move alone would not satisfy my mother. Maybe satisfaction would come courtesy of the only proper family holiday we'd have the month following our move in April, 1982.

However, my mother was beginning to display a tendency when the going was good to sabotage things for herself and those around her. So, in May of that year we jetted off for two weeks to the west coast of Cyprus to the ancient city of Paphos. How fitting then that the island considered the birthplace of the Greek goddess of love, lust, and passion would provide the setting for my mother's most audacious act to date; an act which would see her permanently outcast from both sides of our family and brought her own to the very brink of destruction.

Following on from her grammar school days, my mother maintained a sense of self-education. During this period of the early 1980s, she'd develop keen interests in subjects such as heraldry, ancient Greek mythology and cosmology. The latter likely came about courtesy of the screening on BBC1 during the summer of 1981 of Carl Sagan's thirteen part documentary series, entitled “Cosmos”. Unlike Dad, a creature of habit who remained steadfast with what he knew, Mum had a sense of adventure and a willingness to try new things. Both traits would be on full display during our upcoming holiday in Cyprus. Despite only having read about the eastern Mediterranean island, my mother decided she'd fallen in love before we'd even set foot there.

Whether kismet or mere coincidence, our holiday apartment in the west coast town of Paphos came about following an advertisement in my Dad's company's monthly newsletter. The owners of the apartment, a Greek Cypriot man and his British wife, ran their own holiday company in North London. By chance, our holiday coincided with the owner's trip to Cyprus to visit his extended family who were also based in Paphos. Introducing himself to my mother by his Greek name of Stelios when he telephoned the apartment one particular day, we'd subsequently refer to him by the anglicised version of Steve.

While it's fair to say that we were doing just fine before Steve made contact with us, things became much more eventful afterwards than they were before. Despite his intense dislike of driving, in order for us to see the sights, Dad had to bite the bullet and hire a car. Top of Mum's list was the town of Kouklia, home of the remains of a sanctuary dedicated to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. The second on her list, 'Aphrodite's Rock', marked the birthplace of the legendary goddess born of the sea foam on the coast between Paphos and Limassol. Although we'd have no difficulty locating Aphrodite's Rock, owing to Dad's lack of confidence as a driver and unclear road signs, we'd never actually manage to find Kouklia, despite it being located no more than ten minutes from the rock itself.

Nevertheless, it's similarly fair to say that our holiday could be divided into two parts, the part before and the part involving Steve, who arrived at the apartment as arranged with my mother the day after his phone call. What transpired as he walked through the door I can only describe as the kind of combustible moment I'd witness between my mother and another man for the first and only time. Yet, the nature of Steve's appeal was certainly not in his appearance. At almost a year younger than my Dad at the age of forty-six, a little overweight and with a large, curved nose, Steve cut a rather ordinary figure. However, his appeal lay in the kind of charm, warmth, wit and sense of fun which, like a magnetic tractor beam, pulled us all in almost immediately.

On a separate yet related note, during our monthly visits to Auntie Jackie and the rest of Dad's family in London, I'd often hear her ask Dad what he saw in Mum. As if grappling for an answer, he'd always respond how she could be very charming. The part of her response I wouldn't hear as a child, although would learn as an adult, was how in addition to her charm she must be possessed of a 24-carat gold pussy. Indeed, her charms, which started from the moment she met Steve, would remain on full display for the duration of our holiday.

Starting as he meant to go on, the fun with Steve commenced the very first day of our meeting. In matching hire cars we began our tour of Paphos by following our host down to the harbour, home to a rather lonely looking castle and some enormous pelicans. From there we headed north for a swim in the sea at the renowned Coral Bay. Yet, perhaps the most memorable moment occurred as we entered a taverna on the hill above the beach following our swim. While we made our way through the entrance, an elderly lady reached out to my mother and handed her a small pastry parcel filled with cheese. Right there and then, in that simple gesture of hospitality, was the very moment my mother truly fell head over heels in love with Cyprus. Furthermore, in the days that followed she'd leave us all in absolutely no doubt whatsoever how she genuinely felt about one of its sons.

Continuing where we left off the following day, we headed over to the house of Steve's sister, Aristi. Sporting a similar shaped nose as her brother, we met Aristi and her four daughters, with the youngest two, named Christina and Stavroula, close in age to Dee and me. While sat on a bench under a large tree outside their rather dilapidated little home, with its wonky corrugated iron roof, Christina, Stavroula and I were tasked with making the tea.

On a battered old dual burner camping stove, the girls boiled some water while I gathered some cups. In what would provide a moment of comedy gold, a solitary piece of crooked wallpaper stuck to the painted wall behind the burner suddenly caught fire. Following their initial screams, both girls quickly set about putting the fire out. That done, Christina then dove into a cupboard a produced a roll of wallpaper from which she cut a similar sized square and placed it in the same spot on the wall in the same crooked fashion. Continuing on as if nothing had happened, both girls busied themselves once more with the tea.

As the days unfolded, the more time we spent with Steve the more captivated we became with him. Being exotic, cultured and fun, he embodied everything my father did not and the differences between both men could not have been starker. While eating out he'd teach me Greek phrases to say to the waiters. Furthermore, he'd do the same the evening Aristi and her daughters joined us all for dinner at the renowned Demokritos restaurant in Paphos old town. Yet, Steve truly secured his place in our affections the day he took us to an obscure beach located further up the western coast from Coral Bay. Upon the sands of Corallia Beach, he delighted us all by walking along a fair stretch of the beach on his hands. Such a feat my father would never have considered, let alone attempted.

In addition, the extent of Steve's thrill seeking sense of adventure would be on full display during a subsequent trip into the mountains of Troodos. Following a visit to the famed Kykkos Monastery, Steve decided to take us back to Paphos the longer route via the mountains rather than go back the way we came. With the light eventually turning to dark and the mountain roads growing ever narrower, it became clear that Steve may have lost his way.

Being more like a footpath than a road, by now the ground beneath us was barely wider than the width of the car. Furthermore, the lack of any protective barriers against a sheer drop and the speed with which Steve drove left us all biting our knuckles to the bone. Adding insult to injury, Steve resorted to speeding up each time a mountain rabbit ran out in front of the car. Suddenly, with a loud bang followed by a bumping sensation, it became clear as we came to a halt that we had a flat tyre. With Steve and Dad working in tandem to change it, we were soon on our way and arrived back in Paphos late in the evening exhausted by our little detour.

Whether as a consequence of the recent activity, during the middle weekend of our holiday, I'd spend part of the day in the local hospital following an asthma attack. Contrary to her usual indifference to them, this particular attack was sufficiently prolonged and intense for Mum and Dad to take me to Paphos hospital. After a few hours on oxygen, the medic packed me off, much to the amusement of all whom my father regaled subsequently, with two suppositories. How a suppository could prevent an asthma attack was anybody's guess. Indeed, had I rocked up with a broken leg, or worse, I suspect they would've handed me a suppository or two and sent me on my way!

Nothing which occurred at the beginning of our second week could've predicted how it would end. While the sudden change of pace was a welcome one and with Mum making no secret of the fact that she wanted to move to Cyprus, we'd spend the next few days viewing apartments. Yet, what started off as different and exciting soon became monotonous with each apartment we viewed. Consequently, when Mum announced one afternoon towards the end of the week that she and Steve were going to view another apartment, we were all content to stay home. Despite looking somewhat overdressed in a light cotton number she'd bought from a local gift shop, and with no objections, my mother left the apartment.

Considering how captivated Mum had been with Steve, and, seemingly, him with her, it should have come as no surprise to any of us when she didn't return to the apartment that night. Indeed, no-one who'd observed how engrossed in conversation with each other they were at any opportunity could deny the connection between them. Undoubtedly, he'd lit a fire under my mother and brought her fully to life in a way I'd seen neither before nor since. As unsettled as I was at the prospect of going to bed that night with her gone, in addition to being left alone with my father, I found myself invested in her happiness and went to sleep that night feeling strangely pleased for her.

Conversely, for my father I had little sympathy whatsoever. Although the sight of him sitting bolt upright on a sofa bed in the dark as I crept to the toilet in the middle of the night was a pitiable one, I naively considered him the source of my mother's unhappiness in addition to my own. The following day, my mother telephoned the apartment to say that she'd spent the night in the capital city, Nicosia. To the news that she didn't know exactly when she'd be back, Dad took us all to the beach opposite the apartment, which involved beating a mile long path through plantations and marshland.

With the two nights she'd been away having felt like an eternity, Mum returned the day before we were due to leave. Armed with boxes of Turkish delight for Dee, Sas and me, my mother wandered in without a care in the world. Considering how perfectly at ease she and Dad were with arguing in front of us children, the fallout I had expected didn't come, save a few cross words exchanged after we'd gone to bed on our last night.

The following day, the driver who'd fetched us in his Mercedes from Larnaca Airport met us outside the apartment for our return journey. Just then, at that very moment, Steve pulled up and came over to say goodbye. During the one and only time I'd see my father cross with another man, he proceeded to tick Steve off by telling him that he'd ruined his marriage. As our car pulled away, and with Mum sitting in the back with us, she pulled me to her and began crying, to which I found myself suddenly doing the same.

It took no time at all following our return home for us all to continue where we left off. Furthermore, Mum's dalliance with Steve compounded the ongoing tension between her and Dad. In addition, Dee and I continued to fight like cat and dog, as did Dad and me. As for Mum, she became increasingly withdrawn and began putting her headphones on and retreating into her own world. Indeed, her lot would become a more onerous one following Dad's announcement that our rented accommodation placed an untenable burden on the family finances and that Mum must now find work.

Predictably, Dad's disclosure would not be music to the ears of someone who'd got away with doing as little around the home as possible and whose greatest pleasure at the time was sitting and listening to her music. Yet, the secretarial role Mum would shortly fulfil became the first in a slew of roles she'd gain and then quickly lose. Unfortunately for her, she possessed the kind of character inclined to talk about people behind their back while remaining charming to their face. Furthermore, until her colleagues knew better, they would unwisely take my mother into their confidence only for her to subsequently betray them to the rest of the staff.

Moreover, my mother engaged in the kind of shameless flirting with male colleagues which pitted her against the females in her office. Additionally, the prospect of an incident of petty theft remained a perpetual risk. All of these rather problematic tendencies meant my mother would be out of employment more often than in it. Indeed, jobs were easy enough for her to come by although much more difficult to sustain. Against a backdrop of failed appointments, in the years that followed, County Court judgements began to appear intermittently on our doormat.

By now the pattern was well established in that my mother's moods tended to affect that of those close to her. Yet, rescuing her from her current misery, a padded envelope which landed on our doormat one day ensured her immediate relief. Upon opening it, a cassette tape fell out which she placed in the tape deck of her hi-fi before pressing play. Suddenly, the sound of a Greek bouzouki emerged followed by the familiar voice of Steve. As if transported immediately back to Cyprus, my mother came fully to life once again. With Dad being out at work, Mum played the tape right through and would do so over and over. To the sound of Steve's musings interspersed between jokes recorded from the radio, even from afar, Steve had a power my father didn't have, a power I also possessed, to make my mother laugh.

Her contact with Steve suddenly re-established, my mother became completely preoccupied with the charismatic Greek-Cypriot once more. Engrossed by her tape, she'd take to playing it whenever she could, even listening to it with her headphones on while my father sat directly opposite. What with more tapes arriving on our doormat on a regular basis, it wasn't long before, with Dad at work, Mum and Steve began talking on the phone.

Between their lengthy conversations and her listening to his tapes, my mother was now completely engrossed with all things Steve. By now hopelessly smitten with him, she took to inserting his name into song lyrics she'd sing aloud while wearing her headphones. In a similar manner to Bill Stone, the soundtrack to her affair with Steve came courtesy of Abba tracks “Under Attack” and “Angeleyes” in addition to Barbra Streisand's “Woman in Love” and John Denver's “Shanghai Breezes”. Needing to maintain some semblance of a connection with my mother, I'd often sit at her feet while she listened and sang.

Moreover, in moments of unguarded candour, my mother would listen to unlucky in love type songs before revealing how they reflected her own sense of desire and longing. As if further proof were needed, I opened a book on Greek mythology one particular day to find the words “...I miss him only on the days ending in y…” inscribed on the inside cover. Predictably, it would only be a matter of time before my mother and Steve conspired to meet again. I wouldn't know before then the part I'd play in their rendezvous or the ramping up it would signal in their relations. Nor did I know what would transpire the day my father's restraint and patience with my mother finally ran out.

Despite the eventual rupture, the summer of 1982 would be memorable for two particular reasons. Firstly, on the initial Saturday in June the whole of Coxheath village turned out for a fete on the green behind the village hall. Stalls, music and entertainment provided the build-up to the much anticipated World Custard Pie Championship held annually at the event. Taking my place alongside the other kids in the village brave enough, I stood behind either of the two opposing teams launching flour and water based pies at each other. When a team member ducked, the pie tended to end up in the faces of the kids standing nearby.

Then, during the six-week school holiday, Dee, Sas and I attended the summer playscheme which took place in the village hall itself. Once again, the children of the village converged from Monday to Friday to enjoy arts and crafts and such sporting activities as badminton, rounders and table-tennis. During a few games of the latter I met a rather bolshie young blonde-haired girl by the name of Michelle whom I recognised as one of Dee's classmates. Before long, she and I learned that aside from table-tennis, we shared a mutual love of actual lawn tennis. Seven years on from our initial meeting, Michelle and I would meet again and begin in earnest a friendship which continues to this day.

Electing to meet on a Saturday afternoon while Dad was out, Mum began dressing in preparation for Steve's arrival. Having finished curling her hair and applying make-up, Mum added the finishing touches with a dab from her L'aimant perfume compact to each wrist. Despite my mother being overweight since her mid teens, even her own mother conceded that she had a pretty face. Yet, expectation soon turn to frustration and then panic when Steve hadn't arrived by the arranged time. Dutiful to my mother and with a desire to see her happy again with Steve, I quickly donned my sneakers before running up to the main road to find him.

Having perched myself high up on a fence, I sat and watched as car after car passed by. In my rush to leave, it hadn't occurred to me to ask what make and colour car Steve drove. My head moving this way and that as a stream of cars flowed by, after a while I still could not see him. Suddenly, a red Ford Granada Estate car came into view being driven by a smart looking man in a dark blue jacket. Recognising the driver to be Steve, I waved my arms frantically and jumped down from the fence. Slamming on his brakes, he opened the passenger door and beckoned me in before he drove us the short distance to the house.

With Mum now happily aboard, she and Steve headed off. Only once his car had disappeared from view did I wonder where they were headed and, most importantly, when she'd be back. Nonetheless, my mother's absence on this particular weekend set the tone for what was to come over the next few months. Whereas on that first weekend my mother left on the Saturday and returned late the following day, during subsequent weekends, she'd disappear of a Friday and not return until late on the Sunday evening. Indeed, it became a regular occurrence for Dee and I to arrive home from school on a Friday afternoon to find cooking instructions sitting next to a casserole dish on the kitchen counter. Instead of him cooking food for us, my forty-eight year-old father ended up having his dinner prepared for him by his eleven year-old daughter.

Whereas on their first weekend my mother and Steve stayed overnight in a local hotel, on subsequent weekends she began travelling to London. Following her return of a Sunday evening, I'd take at times to sitting on the stairs in the dark and listen to them argue. To Mum's suggestion that they find a way to compromise, Dad retorted that he'd compromised as much as he were willing to. As a nine-year-old, I didn't know the meaning of the word 'compromise' although knew I'd have to look it up at the earliest opportunity. I'd later learn that compromise meant something along the lines of having to live on certain terms.

Likewise, it wouldn't be merely my father having to compromise. With each absence I found feelings of resentment for my mother beginning to stir. It'd be another four years before I'd unleash the kind of anger and frustration on her that had been gradually building following the events of the previous ten years. In the meantime, what began as joy for her that she'd finally found happiness eventually turned to resentment; resentment that she'd gone in the first place and that, having done so, she'd left me in the company of someone for whom I shared a mutual resentment. Nonetheless, following her absence, my mother would always return of a Sunday evening without a care in the world bearing gifts from Hamley's and copious amounts of sweets. As would so often be the case, her motivation for giving owed more to atonement and buying affection than a genuine desire to do selfless good.

As for Dad, until such time as his patience with mum and capacity to compromise finally ran out, he'd seek relief in both the likeliest and the unlikeliest of places. Regarding the former, he'd have a captive audience in Auntie Jackie, who'd long since considered my mother bad news. Done without any consideration for the effect on his children, Dad would recount to his sister every last detail of Mum's antics both during and since our holiday in Cyprus. Yet, Auntie Jackie's response would be muted in comparison to that of Mum's own mother, from whom Dad also sought sympathy.

In a similar manner to our visit to Auntie Jackie, with Mum currently away in London, Dad took the opportunity with us present to bring Nanny and Granddad up to speed. Sitting in her armchair, Nanny knitted frenetically while Dad spoke, pausing only briefly to take intermittent drags on her John Player Carlton cigarette. As Dad continued to relay the lurid details of Mum's shenanigans, the pace of Nanny's knitting quickened while the drags on her cigarette grew longer and harder.

Suddenly and without warning, Nanny slammed her knitting down before launching into a ferocious attack against her eldest daughter. Having never witnessed Nanny angry the hairs immediately went up on the back of my neck as the true extent of her resentment became apparent. From past to present, Nanny hurled every accusation possible at my mother, branding her a great actress who could turn on the water works at will, a thief who stole money from her purse, a snob who wouldn't deign to live in a council house and someone who, with these latest antics, had broken her father's heart.

It's worth noting that with the last accusation, Nanny took it upon herself to speak for Granddad, who sat opposite her in silence throughout the entire tirade. Declaring her daughter no longer welcome in their home, Mum suddenly found herself persona non-grata on both sides of the family. As for Steve, Nanny henceforth referred to him as 'the greasy Greek' whenever he came up in conversation. As a consequence of her vitriolic display, my view of Nanny changed that day and I'd remain forever wary of her. Little did I know then that less than seven years hence I too would become the target of her casual cruelty.

As for the unlikeliest of places for Dad to find sympathy, while he may not have exactly found that, he certainly discovered a kind of solace. Whereas in the future when my father found himself similarly besieged he'd seek sanctuary in his local Baptist church, during Mum's affair with Steve he sought distraction at a nearby nudist camp. A dyed-in-the-wool naturist, Dad would often walk around at home wearing noting except a pair of flip-flops.

Indeed, there'd come a time in the future when, with Dee and I both at secondary school, Dad would wake us both at 7am each morning with a cup of tea. To the sound of his flip-flops I'd awaken all bleary eyed. Mercilessly, my first sight of the day would be my father's hairless buttocks bobbling up and down as he walked away after setting my tea down on my bedside table. Adding insult to injury, he'd often turn the corner to leave my room and fart on his way out. Nonetheless, providing some consolation to him what with Mum in London, Dad headed to a nudist camp nestled in the Kent countryside with Dee, Sas and me in tow. While we played in the club pool with the other children, Dad could often be found enjoying easy conversation with the other patrons.

On the Sunday that we'd been to visit Nanny and Granddad, we came home to the unexpected sight of Mum in the kitchen peeling potatoes. In a rush to denounce what I naively regarded as his treachery, I wasted no time in informing her that Dad had told Nanny and Granddad about her affair with Steve. To this, Mum branded him a big mouth just looking for sympathy and any excuse to stir things up with her parents.

Furthermore, I relayed to Mum how Nanny said she was no longer welcome in the family home. Facing potentially devastating rejection, Mum responded nonchalantly that as there were only so many times she were willing to be kicked in the teeth, she didn't care if she never saw her mother again. Indeed, the ease with which both women let each other go suggested there was no love lost between them whatsoever. While Dad would continue to take us kids from time to time to see Nanny and Granddad, our visits with them had become tainted and I'd never feel comfortable in her presence again.

With Mum's primary focus being her relationship with Steve, she began to harbour doubts as to the direction in which their relationship was headed. Their lengthy phone calls appeared to provide her with little reassurance and when not on the phone, Mum sought ever more solace in her music. One evening while occupying my usual position at her feet, Mum pulled her headphones away from one ear before revealing how she'd asked Steve on a number of occasions for clarification on the future of their relationship. Following this she explained how his response was always the same and mimicked his voice before saying “baby, don't worry”. Yet, worry she did, so much so that she soon forgot discretion and began engaging in conversations with Steve with Dad in the house. Indeed, Mum's lack of tact would prove to be a bridge too far for him and, one Saturday afternoon, events were brought to a head in a sudden and altogether shocking manner.

On those occasions during their affair when Mum didn't go to London, it wouldn't have been down to her. Indeed, my mother wouldn't have given us a second thought if the opportunity arose to spend time with Steve. Therefore, the reason for Mum remaining at home this particular weekend is most likely to have been down to him. While unable to meet, this did not prevent them both on this particular day from engaging each other in yet another lengthy phone conversation. However, this call was different in that it took place while the rest of us, including Dad, were in the lounge watching the football on television.

With the phone perched on the windowsill at the bottom of the stairs opposite the open lounge door, Mum's conversation could be easily overheard. With her child-like giggles and lovey-dovey chat beginning to rankle him and in an attempt to drown Mum out, Dad turned up the volume on the television. Likely unable to hear for the noise, Mum came to the lounge door and slammed it shut. In response, Dad promptly sat down on the floor with his back against the door. After a time and with her conversation with Steve having concluded, Mum attempted to open the door. Just then, upon finding the door wedged shut, Mum began to kick it. Despite each mighty kick, Dad remained firmly against the door. Suddenly, following one almighty kick, Dad flung the door open and ran out into the hallway. No sooner had Dee and I ran out after him than we were met with the sight of Dad smashing the telephone receiver repeatedly into Mum's face. While Dee and I looked on in horror, Dad gave vent to all his pent up anger as he continued to rain blows with the receiver. Unable to witness the assault upon my mother any longer and realising my powerlessness to protect her, I ran out of the front door in tears and headed straight for the phone box in the village.

After running half a mile without stopping, I reached the phone box still in tears having cried all the way there. Wheezing like a set of bagpipes someone had just sat on, I picked up the phone and, without thinking, immediately made a reverse charge call to Steve's home. After accepting the charges, a lady on the other end of the line asked who I was. No sooner had I attempted to speak than I began sobbing once more. In my distress I hadn't even considered what I might say if anyone other than Steve had answered the phone.

Nonetheless, speaking to me in a gentle tone, the nice lady on the end of the line calmed me down long enough for me to explain to her the horrible scene I'd just witnessed before I dissolved into tears anew. Attempting to soothe me once more, the lady told me to return home as my mother would no doubt be worried about me. Eventually I calmed down sufficiently to promise the nice lady that I'd go straight home. With this, she told me she had to go herself and promptly hung up. Although unaware at the time, I'd learn subsequently that the kindly lady who'd answered the phone was in fact Steve's wife!

Moments later I found myself back home again having run all the way back from the village without stopping. Upon entering the living room I saw my father sitting in his chair calmly reading the newspaper. Opposite him at the dining table sat my mother with a cold compress against a lump above one eye which had swollen to the size of a golf ball. With the sight of my mother injured in this way coupled with the realisation of my powerlessness to protect her, at once I felt the kind of fiery resentment for him that would burn within me for what remained of my childhood. While relieving his frustrations in the way he did, in one fell swoop, he had shattered the little that remained of my sense of home as a place of safety.

Nevertheless, if my father reasoned that violence alone would be enough to control my mother's behaviour, time would prove him sorely wrong. However, the trips did indeed begin to occur less frequently as did the phone calls. Before long and without any explanation as to why, my mother stopped going to London altogether. In addition, she stopped playing the songs she associated with Steve and spoke less of him as time went on. Yet, on those odd occasions when my mother did mention Steve, her recollections were tinged with a noticeable sense of fondness, longing and regret.

Considering how much of her feelings towards Steve my mother had expressed so openly, conjecture leads me to believe that plain embarrassment prevented her from revealing how their affair ended. Furthermore, I suspect that my mother gambled by giving Steve an ultimatum, either his wife, their family and their business, or her. Indeed, Steve had far too much to lose to choose my mother over his wife. Indeed, my mother would not have thought twice about leaving her family in search of her own happiness and in her naivety I've no doubt she expected that Steve would do likewise.

Therefore, with the one who got away now gone, it begged the question of how my mother could expect to find contentment as a wife and mother ever again. The simple answer was she wouldn't, as she'd prove in the not too distant future. In the meantime she'd continue to do the minimum she could get away with in her dual role while withdrawing consistently into the escapist sanctuary of her music and losing jobs as quickly as she'd found them.

With my tenth birthday approaching at the end of the year, while by this time I'd stopped wetting the bed, one unpleasant aspect of this past summer's events would linger. Following Dad's assault on my mother, I began to experience particularly disturbing dreams. Confusingly, these dreams would feature my mother and an exact double of her. Both naked, the double would begin attacking my mother before pinning her down on the floor and biting her ferociously. Upon hearing my mother's screams, I'd attempt to enter the room where the attack was be taking place to find that the door would only open wide enough for me to witness the attack but nothing more. At this point I'd invariably wake up. While these dreams would not continue indefinitely, I became reluctant for a while to go out and play lest I'd return home to find my mother dead on the floor having been bitten to death.

Nonetheless, while we didn't manage to find Kouklia in the literal sense, albeit briefly, my mother found a Kouklia of her own with Steve. However, time would prove over and over how those whom she wanted ultimately didn't want her and those who wanted her she didn't care about losing. Unsurprisingly, following the events of summer, 1982, I found myself harbouring a visceral resentment for my father while the seeds of the same for my mother had by now been sown. Somewhat of a mouthy kid by nature, I had also begun to develop something of a chip on my shoulder.

Yet, the greatest sympathy during this time I reserved for my sister, Dee. Despite our mother's casual cruelties towards her, Dee too felt the disruption of Mum's repeated absences. Inevitably, this led a girl otherwise reserved in her emotions to seek ways of releasing her anger. Curiously, as if one kitchen fire wasn't enough for one holiday, the morning following the night I'd seen Dad bolt upright in the dark, I went into the apartment kitchen. On the wall where before hung a set of instructions on how to use the various appliances was now an empty space while the instructions themselves had been reduced to a pile of ash. With me being by far the naughtier child and Dad willing to believe in my eternal guilt, despite my protests that it wasn't me, I still got the blame. Why Dee waited until we were both in our forties to “fess up” is beyond me. Better late than never, as they say!

Approaching my junior school gates on Friday 11th March, 1983, I had no reason to suspect this day would be different to any other. Yet, for the most unexpected of reasons, this particular day would turn out to be one I'd never forget. Having taken the register, my teacher, a tall and handsome man by the name of Mr. Harrington, closed it and stood up. Usually at this point, Mr. Harrington would walk over to the blackboard then sit down in front of it and proceed to pick his nose. Unconcerned by the grimacing faces of his class, he'd select a plum bogey and, after examining it for a few moments, proceed to pop it in his mouth. However, on this day he began by drawing our attention to the absence of Elizabeth, the horse loving recorder playing object of my affection still going out with my best friend, Dale.

Appearing solemn in his manner and tone of voice, Mr. Harrington announced that the previous evening Elizabeth had been knocked down by a car while crossing the road opposite her home. Upon hearing these words, suddenly my heart leapt into my mouth while others around the class gasped. Mr. Harrington went on to explain that while Elizabeth's injuries were not life threatening, she'd be spending the next few days in Maidstone's West Kent Hospital. Following the dreadful news, our third year class spent the rest of the day in a state of shock and disbelief. Upon arriving home the tears I'd suppressed all day overwhelmed me and no sooner had I put my bag down on floor than I began sobbing uncontrollably.

While not completely lacking in a capacity to console, I'd find my mother in this instance gentle and kind in a way I'd never known her before, or since. Having cuddled me until my sobs had subsided, she suggested I go into the garden and pick a large handful of the daffodils among those which had recently sprung up. Following my return to the kitchen, my mother explained that she'd phoned the hospital and was advised that I could stay with Elizabeth until visiting hours were over at 8pm. With this, she put the money for the return bus fare in my hand and packed me off to the hospital.

Soaked to the skin having been caught in a downpour, and with a bunch of wilted daffodils in hand, I presented myself at the foot of Elizabeth's bed. Sporting a doozy of a black eye, she remained in good enough humour to remark on how funny I looked as I came through the ward door all wet and carrying a handful of soggy daffodils. That night, Elizabeth's father dropped me home and it came as a great relief to overhear him explaining to my mother that once his daughter's fractured pelvis had knitted back together, she'd be as right as rain.

Eighteen months had passed since we'd moved into our current home, a rented semi-detached house in a quiet cul-de-sac named South Crescent. Our move to South Crescent came about, as did most things, at the insistence of my mother. Preceding this was the disclosure from a wealthy insurance client of my father's, a man by the name of Mr. Judge, that a tenant in one of his properties had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness and a short prognosis. In his desire for a quick turnaround, Mr. Judge proceeded to ask my father if he would like first refusal. After viewing the house in question, a mock Tudor cottage nestled in a valley in the nearby village of Boughton Monchelsea during a brief drive-by, my mother decided we'd all be much happier living there.

Consequently, for the purposes of a speedy move once Mr. Judge's ailing tenant had died, and on my mother's whim, my parents sold our house at Georgian Drive following which we moved to South Crescent. Yet, eighteen months later, Mr. Judge's stricken tenant remained alive. Therefore, my father thought it wise to put himself and my mother on the property ladder once again. Remaining in the village of Coxheath, their purchase of a three bedroom terraced house represented my fifth move in eight years. Characterised by one considerable disadvantage and one consolatory advantage, in late 1983, we moved into yet another new home.

Similar to our home in Georgian Drive, for our move to the new home in Chestnut Drive, my mother once again insisted on the installation of a split-level cooker. As to the obvious disadvantage, this came in the form of my bedroom, which would be in a rather dilapidated looking wooden conservatory attached to the rear of the house. Worse still, while I'd be at one end of the conservatory, at the other was situated my father's office. With Dee having shared a room with Sas for the previous six years and approaching thirteen herself, she had more than paid her dues and needed her own space. Yet, while the prospect of being separated from everyone else at night didn't exactly fill me with glee, I soon overcame my disappointment when I realised that in the next street to us lived my good friend, Dale.

Following this latest move, the spring term of 1984 would see my class bid farewell to the nose-picker Mr. Harrington and welcome a new teacher into our fourth year class. Prior to the arrival of our new teacher, our headmistress, the formidable Mrs. Levick, paid our class an unexpected visit. Departing from her characteristically formal manner, Mrs. Levick explained to the class that in addition to being a good friend of hers, our new teacher, a lady by the name of Mrs. Stapleton, was very overweight and cautioned us to remain respectful. Suffice to say that her caveat was unnecessary as Mrs. Stapleton, with the kind of warmth and care so sorely lacking in teachers of the time, charmed her way into the hearts of her young charges with considerable ease.

Indeed, so assured did I feel of Mrs. Stapleton's care and compassion that I found myself sitting before her one morning break time. While the rest of the class ran around the playground with abandon, I shared with Mrs. Stapleton the intimate details of the previous eight years of my life. From Bill Stone to Steve and from my mother's violence to my turbulent relationship with my father, she listened sympathetically as I spoke. Much like a similarly gentle teacher I'd encounter a few months later during my first term at secondary school, Mrs. Stapleton stood apart from the surly and slap happy teachers which were so commonplace at that time.

Regrettably, said surly and slap happy teachers were two-a-penny come September when I finally joined Dee at Cornwallis Secondary School. Situated in the adjoining village of Linton, reaching Cornwallis involved a daily three mile walk. On the first day, the first year pupils gathered in the lower school assembly hall where we were divided into our respective classes. With each class sat in rows one behind the other, I sat in silence and stared at the back of an unknown classmate's head until such time as our form teacher came to collect us.

During the two years I'd spend at Cornwallis, a French teacher by the name of Miss Baker would be my form teacher. Besides being petite in stature, Miss Baker's two most prominent characters were her heavy lisp and thick blue eye shadow which appeared to have been applied using a trowel. Each class year from the first through to the fifth year were divided into one of four houses. Expecting to be placed in the same house as Dee, named Monchelsea, instead I found myself in another house named Wayfarers, or “gay fairies” as we were otherwise known. Yet, it wouldn't be too long before I realised that despite some menacing looking characters among the upper school kids, the biggest bullies at Cornwallis were in fact the teachers.

Undoubtedly, it felt rather odd at first to refer to the teachers as “sir” and “ma'am”. Much like Coxheath Junior, kind and compassionate teachers were in very short supply, with ill-tempered characters very much in the majority. Two of the most fearsome teachers among the staff I'd encounter in successive years. The first, an overweight and perpetually bad-tempered woman by the name of Miss Burkett, or “bird shit” as she was otherwise known, I'd encounter as my first year music teacher.

Similarly, an equally bad-tempered man by the name of Mr. Greenslade I'd encounter as my science teacher in my second year. Sporting scruffy hair and a goatee beard, Mr. Greenslade resembled the television character “Catweazle”. Possessed of a wicked aim to rival that of my mother, Mr. Greenslade needed no excuse to throw the blackboard rubber across the room, or cane someone's buttocks with a metre ruler, or thrash them with the rubber hose connected to a Bunsen burner or simply slap them around the face. Despite the overall strictness, I'd readily indulge my own attention-seeking urge to make others laugh by seizing the opportunity to be the class comedian where I though I could get away with it.

Nonetheless, there was one man whom I wouldn't have even dared to think of crossing in the form of the forbidding Mr. Andrews, head of the lower school. Following the first registration with Miss Baker, the boys were sent back to the lower school hall for a talk from Mr. Andrews. Like a drill sergeant barking at a group of young cadets, Mr. Andrews addressed the first year boys from the hall stage. While standing beneath him, we listened as he proceeded to remind us of the school's strict uniform policy and how we were not to remove our ties in the summer until he'd done so first. Consequently, during those odd occasions when Mr. Andrews actually removed his tie, news of the rare event spread through the lower school corridors like wildfire.

In addition to the overabundance of strict and ill tempered teachers, arguably the most hardening experience at Cornwallis was school showers. With the boys in winter playing football and rugby on the field in the pouring rain, our reward for doing so would be communal showering in the freezing sports hall changing rooms. While our male PE teachers looked on, approximately fifty mostly pre pubescent boys caked in mud collectively froze to death under tepid water before rushing to dress amid the chill of the changing room. Perhaps more devastating to most than the bitter temperatures was the curious sight of the odd boy who'd already begun puberty while the rest of us had to wait a few more months in anguished expectation for hair to appear on our genitals and our balls to drop.

Menacing teachers and Baltic showers aside, like Mrs. Stapleton at my junior school, I'd find one teacher with whom I'd instantly connect in the form of my English teacher, Mrs. Firth. Having joined the staff during the year prior to my arrival, Mrs. Firth had already earned a reputation among pupils of being a soft touch. While I'd seize the opportunity in her class to indulge in my usual smutty banter, I found myself experiencing a sense of empathy for Mrs. Firth on account of one unfortunate physical characteristic.

Around this time, Mrs. Firth had endured a particularly stressful divorce which had left her with a noticeable bald patch on the crown of her head. While it was certainly within my capabilities to mock teachers for their appearance, I could not collude with those who, within her earshot, would so cruelly refer to Mrs. Firth by the nickname “baldy”. While meeting Mrs. Firth again many years later, she revealed how she was fully aware of the unfortunate tag and disclosed the circumstances surrounding her sudden hair loss. With Mrs. Firth's love of the printed word remaining undiminished, I admitted my regret at not having paid more attention in her class and how I too had come to share in her perpetual love of words.

Although I'd clocked him for the first time while we were all sat on the lower school hall floor waiting for Miss Baker, it was during our first English lesson that I'd become properly aware of a classmate by the name of Stuart. What made Stuart stand out was that he and I were the only ones in our class who showed up on our first day wearing a blazer. Consequently, having realised we were in a minority, we soon put our blazers to the back of our respective wardrobes. Yet, when Stuart arrived late to our first English class with a tear-stained face at having lost his way, I knew instantly that I wanted to be his friend. An academically bright boy, Stuart would leave Cornwallis for grammar school two years later.

However, in the meantime, Stuart and I would become good mates while forming part of a slightly larger group of friends. Made up of fellow classmates, our group consisted of Justin, a boy whose lankiness made him appear older and, therefore, ideal for buying cigarettes, along with Penny, whose parents ran a village pub, and Simone, an overweight yet pleasant girl whose father was a police officer. Despite our occasional ribbing of Simone, she'd show her mettle as a friend and come to my rescue four years later in perhaps the most desperate moment of my entire childhood.

As for Dee, she too had made conscious choices when it came to her friends, albeit with one peculiarity. Being somewhat of an anomaly was the pairing of Dee and another girl in her class by the name of Angela. A precocious girl with large breasts and an attitude to match, Angela's reputation preceded her. With a penchant for fighting and readily back-chatting teachers, Angela was the polar opposite of the shy and retiring Dee. Despite their opposing characters, Dee and Angela would become the best of friends. Remaining curious as to their coupling, I'd ask Dee many years later what drew her to Angela. To this she replied that on account of the shit going on at home, she didn't want any trouble at school. Consequently, with Angela by her side, Dee ensured she'd be as safe as houses during her time at Cornwallis.

On the other hand, the house in which we were both less safe remained our own. While a relative tranquillity belied the next chaotic episode to come, the abnormalities of my mother's behaviour continued unabated. Indeed, my father was not the only one who'd walk around at times with next to nothing on. Giving him a run for his money, my mother would make a similarly immodest attempt to cover up courtesy of the single petticoat she'd so often wear while sitting around the house. Leaving little to the imagination, whenever her petticoat rode down her nipples were exposed although when worn too high up would leave her vulva fully displayed. One advantage of the petticoat was the ease with which my mother could pull it down and scoop up her ample breasts before shoving them in my father's face. Grateful for her attention by whichever means possible, my father would respond in kind and plant appreciative kisses on each of my mother's boobs.

Similarly audacious at this time was my mother's antics with a fellow work colleague of my father. Like Mum, my father had no real friends except a fellow insurance agent by the name of Clive. With Dad being much more organised in his accounts than his friend, Clive would visit each time he needed Dad's help to balance his books. A taller and stockier man than my dad and with an unabashedly juvenile sense of humour, Clive revelled in winding my father up. Enlisting my mother in the kind of shenanigans in which she'd be only too happy to oblige, the playful pair engaged in long and lingering kisses full on the lips. Realising he was being made the butt of their joke, my father would end up ignoring them both and continue in his attempt to make sense of the mess Clive had made of his paperwork.

Perhaps the most peculiar occurrence which to this day remains unexplained took place after my bedtime. With my twelfth birthday approaching in December of that year, like every other pubescent boy at that time, I began to produce semen. While I had not disclosed this fact to my mother, its occurrence coincided with her coming into my room late at night and then waking me up to change my bedsheets. In addition to being in a state of groggy confusion at having just been roused from my slumber, I also found myself in a state of embarrassed arousal. While attempting to mask my erection with cupped hands, my humiliation would have been complete had my mother discovered the masturbation hole I'd fashioned in my mattress. Indeed, if what was to occur in the coming weeks had not taken place, I wonder on how many more occasions my mother would have woken me up in such invasive and humiliating circumstances.

Nonetheless, with Dee and I both settled in secondary school and Sas by now in the infants, 1984 was gradually drawing to a close. While a famine had begun to develop in Ethiopia, the striking miners battled the police on our television screens and the IRA attempted to assassination Margaret Thatcher by placing a bomb in her hotel, our family was about to experience a bombshell of our own. Fresh off the school bus, Dee and I arrived home one Friday afternoon to find the house empty and our mother unexpectedly gone. As we walked into the kitchen our eyes were immediately drawn to the casserole dish sitting on the counter top and the set of cooking instructions lying beside. While we knew this could only mean one thing, what we didn't know then was where our mother had gone, with whom, and, most importantly, when we'd see her again.