Saturday, May 14, 2005

Ladeeez and genulmen, i proudly present part the third of Steve M's autobiography 'Life in a northern town' (a hey now now now now now oh yeah, a hey now now now oh oh oh oh oh..)

I had a shit summer holiday that year as you can imagine, it turns out that my dad was seeing the woman next door whom we had all been on holiday with spent time in each others houses and so on, so it was a shock to find this out, I now know why she was trying to be so friendly all the time.
My brother Graham soon began to miss our father, he used to go and visit him quite often where as i would not at all, if i saw him in the street i would run away home. One day Graham said that he wanted to go and live with my dad at his new house at a place called Barber Green a hamlet close to the village of Cartmel, Dads lady friend Mary would be living thier too, around about this time mum was getting quite friendly with mary's ex husband George, It was a wierd time for me at this point 'cos i was being bombarded with bribes from my dad trying to get me to go and live with him {I was having none of that} and George telling me how useless my dad was, it didn't take long for him to start saying i was useless too, but what can you say when you are eleven years old?, so i had to grin and bear it.

I started school at the local comprehensive in 1977 which took the pressure of the home life off me for a while, luckily i ended up in the same class as two of my best friends Kieth who you met in the first chapter and a boy called Peter Weeks we were the people to be seen with as we were regarded as the hardest guys in our year.

Ulverston Victoria High School had two main buildings the lower school on Hart Street and the upper school on Springfield road now these two buildings were a mile and a half apart and sometimes you had lessons in both buildings on the same day so we had to walk between the two quite regularly, on one occasion there was pete, kieth and myself walking to the lower school you know the score, smoking, ties off , long hair and ousing attitude when we came across a milk float parked outside the indoor market {well, we just had to} pete got in the drivers seat kieth and i got on the back with all the lovely dairy products, we set off down new market street into market street heading for our school kieth and i had great fun throwing eggs and yoghurts all over the road god the police got involved and everything we were so bollocked and were grounded for ever or so it seemed.

Christmas came and went, they were not very good at this point so i'll skip them if you don't mind.

In the spring of 1978 mum got word that she had been allocated a council house it made her so happy i had not seen her this happy for ages, so a few weeks later we moved to 10 Birchwood Drive on the Croftlands Estate, life for me went downhill rapid from this point on
Mum and George got married as did Dad and Mary,I did not go to either wedding, I still find it wierd the way they just swapped partners! but thats life i suppose,

I was asked by my dad if i would like to go on holiday with him, mary and my brother as i had not seen Graham for a while i said i would dad said he would clear it with my mum ,so off we went to sunny stratford upon avon camping we had a fantastic time sight seeing, going on trips to different places and i bought my first LP record which was LIVE AND DANGEROUS by Thin Lizzy fantastic!!.

When we got back to Ulverston i made my way back home to croftlands estate, i was greeted by my mother at the door, i went in to find all my stuff packed in a cardboard box, i said whats going on and mother said if you can go on holiday with him you can go and live with him as well, turns out dad hadn't mentioned he was taking me on holiday he had just pushed a note through thier door the night before we went to tell them i was going with them, i said i didn't want to leave and unpacked all my thingsand it was not mentioned again but i did suffer a lot of mental abuse from George as everything i said or did was ridiculed by him i tried to tell my mum but she would have none of it i even tried telling my grandparents in coniston but they said that George was not like that they just could not see what was going on {personally i think they were all scared of him, because of what i know now, plus he was loaded and that can blind the sharpest eyes}

During all of this there was somthing of a happy event in the offing, My wonderful Nan had met a fella at the bingo {as you do} he was called Douglas Stephenson he was from Barrow in Furness, he was a bull of a man hands like shovels we got on really well and had lots in common like cricket, rugby league and football
he also introduced me to the geegees later on but we'll come back to that any way my Nan and Doug got married in st. mary's parish church ulverston in 1979 it was a great day they had tier reception at the fishermans arms in baycliff just down the road from ulverston, I had my first glass of red wine at this happy event!.

I'll finish on that happy note, see you next week, Steve.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You always seem to leave me wanting more! Fantastic entry as ever, a typical case of how not to deal with kids after a break-up. Waiting for more on Douglas! Gx

Anonymous said...

wow how come I cant remember what I did last week let alone what I did when I was younger lol - Steve I love it I cant wait to read next weeks

Lisa XXXX

Anonymous said...

thanks for the comments guys, it is actually quite theraputic writing about my turbulent youth also a bit hilarious, i laughed my socks off when i remembered the milk float episode......wild.
steve