Alone!

© 2012 All rights reserved.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/14/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2627-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2628-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2629-2 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

Acknowledgement

This book wouldn’t have been possible if it had not been suggested, monitored, and chased by Erica, who was prepared to thrash me within an inch of my life to ensure that I continued writing it regardless of the outcome. For that I thank you, Erica.

Contents

Preface

The Beginning to 1965

Three Sisters and an Unexpected Visitor

1966 to 1969

Fragments

1970

Movement

1971

Enemy of the Sun

1972

New Frontiers

Note to the Reader

1973

Bruised and Befuddled

1974

Amazing Discoveries

1975

Lost Love

1976

Anti-Sports

1977 (A)

Humiliation

1977 (B)

Witness

1978

Godsend

1979

Lust, Love, and Honour!

1980 (A)

Victim

1980 (B)

Fallout

1980 (C)

Escape

1981

Nemesis Returns

1982

Celluloid TV

1983

Mission Accomplished

1984

‘Oh My God!’

1985

Regrettable Moral Imperative

1986 (A)

Broken

Note to the Reader

1986 (B)

Wasted

1987

Terrorism

1988

Groomed

1989

‘But Where to Look?’

1990

The Conspiracy to Destroy My Brain Child

1991

Obsessed

1992

Long Black Hair

1993

Hope Awry

1994

Analogous Mischief

1995 (A)

On the Run

1995 (B)

Crossroads

1996 to 1998

Building a Wall

1999

Detour to a Mortgage

2000 to 2004

The Past Overtakes Me

2005

‘Why Not Write a Book?’

2006

Unhappy Memories

2007

Poor Boy

2008

‘Am I Dreaming?’

2009

The Long Wait

2010 to Present Day

Realisation

Never Again!

ALONE!

This autobiography was originally intended as a therapeutic device to help me understand and accept specific situations that occurred in my lifetime.

I have chosen to publish this ‘device’ in order to aid others afflicted with similar problems, but it will mean the airing of family and friends’ dirty laundry, which was never the intention.

In light of this fact, all the participants have been given pseudonyms in order to keep their identity hidden (the exception being those who are already within the public domain).

Should any of their identities be uncovered, there was no malicious intent on my part to publicly discredit those persons or their version of the particulars of this autobiography.

I have also chosen to substitute names of locations, businesses, and some products in order to retain this concept of anonymity.

This story is from my point of view only, and it should be considered true and based on that understanding.

In order to assemble a reasonably accurate picture of the first few years of my life, I’ve extrapolated a combination of my own vague memories with information obtained from consultation with my family. Therefore that particular part of the text is based primarily on hearsay.

To the best of my ability, and wherever required, I have researched and included non-specific release dates of films, drawn on the broadcast schedules for television programmes, and featured music according to its publication data. However, because different countries and regions are involved, there will be some variation in the established facts.

Preface

Have you ever seen the film It’s a Wonderful Life?

For those who haven’t, it was a simple story about a man who was given the opportunity to see what life in his neighbourhood would have been like had he never existed.

The film was a timeless classic that stressed the fact that each person’s life touches so many others.

There is one specific scene that portrays my idea of why we, as humans, perpetuate; why we continue to better ourselves; and what ‘the great scheme of things’ is all about!

The scene itself was quite insignificant, but it personified the message that director Frank Capra so successfully relayed to his audience.

The central character, George Bailey, learns that his little girl is sick with a cold, and he goes to her bedside.

She is overly concerned about the condition of a flower that she holds as some of the petals had fallen off.

Taking the flower, George turns away from her, secretly places the petals into his pocket, and then turns back, showing the little girl that he had ‘fixed’ the problem.

Although in reality the flower was exactly the same as when she gave it to him in the first place, she knew no different, as the love that child held for her father was of paramount importance, and as far as she was concerned ‘daddy can fix anything.’

Ever since the first day that I fell in love, way back when I was twelve years old, I had always wanted to be married and have children. I wanted to live that sequence in the film for real.

To most people there is nothing extraordinary about such a desire, as the possibility of the scenario coming true will be fulfilled by the natural course of their lives when they meet the right person and start a family.

To me, it had always remained a distant hope, and my life, living very much alone where one day bled into the next with no foreseeable end in sight, had become dull and meaningless.

Travel through time with me now as I unlock the secrets that I have kept silent for more than a quarter of a century, battling against the odds and attempting to find some way to challenge the deck of cards that were surely stacked against me from the beginning.

The Beginning to 1965

Three Sisters and

an Unexpected Visitor

To be brought up in a remote village located in the one of the southernmost counties of England can be a most rewarding experience.

Amidst the beautiful Baringfold landscape there is a red brick building with a dual-aspect roof known as Vanity House, which will always be cherished by me, as it’s symbolic of my childhood.

My grandfather Harold was introduced to this dwelling (a gamekeeper’s lodge) when he was evacuated from London during the Second World War.

Not surprisingly, he fell in love with the quietude of this area and a charming young woman named Alice whom he married shortly after.

Happy in their new home, they decided to conceive a family, and thus three daughters came into the world.

The oldest, Betty, would later become a nurse. The youngest, Barbara (affectionately known as Babs), would qualify as a teacher, and my mother, Beatrice, ‘the one in the middle’, would set her sights on being an air hostess.

Throughout the fifties Harold and Alice gave their children the best possible upbringing any parent could possibly hope to achieve, but Babs and Beatrice never really had much time for each other, and Betty often found herself caught up in this sisterly struggle.

The outcome of their bickering made for an uncomfortable divide and left Beatrice ‘feeling’ as if she had become the victim of her two siblings. In turn, she didn’t know if she could trust her sisters or parents when it came to advice, and thus she became defiant, rebellious, and strong-willed.

Soon such an attitude landed her in trouble . . .

My mother had always been an attractive girl, and when she attended a dance at the village hall in 1962, I can quite imagine that all the male heads turned as she entered the room.

It was here that she met Andrew, a twenty year old bachelor, and sometime in April the couple spent the night in a hotel room.

The romantic aspect of this interlude aside, because of their carelessness, they had a heavy price to pay for their unbridled passion, and when a sufficient amount of time had passed; my mother discovered that she was pregnant.

It wasn’t until her condition became more conspicuous (by which time she had turned seventeen) that she confessed this complicated set of circumstances to her family, creating a reaction that was varied from anger to undue concern.

Needless to say, the situation had to be resolved swiftly and was compounded by the fact that abortion was illegal. Left with but few options, her mother proposed that Beatrice give serious thought to marrying Andrew in order to bring up the child in a true family tradition.

It was painfully obvious that the mistake of my conception was a burden that neither really wanted to contend with, but reluctantly they married in September of the same year.

It had been snowing constantly for just short of a month by the time Beatrice went into labour.

On the afternoon of January 24 1963, and desperate to keep her footing, she had to trek down an icy lane that led from Vanity House to the outskirts of the village. No one accompanied her, and the ambulance couldn’t even make it halfway because of the ominously powerful conditions.

It must have been a dreadful experience for the poor girl, and I’ve no doubt she was quite relieved to take comfort in the back of the ambulance that wove its way slowly to Valingford hospital through the drifts.

Later that evening I came screaming into this world.

Problem after problem surrounded my parents, as neither partner had the security of a permanent job.

They resided in a box room at Nana’s house and there was no space to move and no getting away from each other.

This was not the happy harmony that marriage was supposed to portray.

It’s a tragedy to think that my first memories of life were the sound of raised voices reverberating around the house in anger.

My mother was disenchanted with her home-bound lifestyle; she was after all, a vibrant young woman and would rather have been out with her friends than burdened with the responsibility of rearing a little boy or providing a home for a husband who made her unhappy.

She decided to do something positive with her life in 1965 and sought a career.

Being accepted as a trainee air hostess by the minor-league travel company Linear Air was a step in the right direction for her, but it would, in turn, set in motion the deconstruction of her immediate family.

1966 to 1969

Fragments

My parents officially divorced in 1966, and my father went to live with his relatives in Scotsmead village while my mother went on to forge a career as a successfully trained air hostess.

She chose to move closer to the airport, leaving me with Nana and Grandad, but by abandoning me, she forfeited the role of mother while I bonded with my grandparents.

In all fairness, she was young and didn’t know any better.

Somewhere along the line during that year, I broke my leg whilst riding my father’s bicycle and once I was healed, I attended a nursery in the nearby village of West Woodhome.

In 1967 my father discovered the love of another woman, and my mother, who was none too happy about her own circumstances, held it against him and became vindictive by trying to poison her son against his own father.

This was such a pity, as it was the ‘Summer of Love’, a term that marked the birth of the hippie culture and had a direct link to the music of the time.

There were many changes within the music industry that year including the fact that Rolling Stone magazine became the mouthpiece of the musical world and fifteen year old Peter Gabriel formed Genesis after he handed a demo tape to producer Jonathan King.

The Beatles came out with a ground-breaking new album called Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Hailed by the critics for its originality, it became the quintessential piece to be inserted into the musical jigsaw that would one day become known as ‘progressive rock’.

The highlight of the album had to have been ‘A Day in the Life’, beautifully orchestrated to the point of genius. (‘I read the news today. Oh boy! Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall’.)

It was the same year that I started as a weekly boarder at Treyford House School near Esham, a private day school for boys aged three to eleven and girls three to eighteen.

During my tenure at this establishment I never once laid eyes on any member of the opposite sex anywhere in the grounds except for the teachers, so presumably we were confined to separate sides of the building.

I always thought of this educational facility as a boy’s-only boarding school where I had a traditional brown satchel and my name was written on all my clothes.

Every Friday they served macaroni and cheese for lunch, a delicacy that most children from those days have probably since avoided.

Not only that! Sports were of fundamental importance—something I have never been very keen on.

On special occasions my father came to fetch me on Friday afternoons, bringing me new toys to play with and news of the family. On my return to Vanity House for the alternate weekends, I spent the majority of the time glued to the television, as there was no such facility at Treyford.

It was almost as if it was ‘a treat’ to be able to watch the world through the eyes of the flickering screen in the bungalow lounge.

The programme that most clearly stuck in my mind was The Basil Brush Show.

During the long haul of the weekdays, I was sad, missing Nana to the point where I pined for her regularly. Most of the nights were spent crying and pondering the question of what I had done so wrong to deserve such a punishment.

In 1968, I went to my first cinema outing to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The entertainment was engrossing, because you can’t beat the idea of a flying car, an evil child catcher with lollipop fingers, the comedy of Dick Van Dyke, and a wonderful musical soundtrack.

The intermission for the film was timed to perfection: the car appeared to fall off a cliff and had all of us children screaming for a resolution. (‘This is X speaking!’ ‘Shrecks?’ ‘No, X!’ ‘X as in uh . . . X and bacon!’)

I was just old enough to realise that something wasn’t quite right about my family situation, and I was thrown into more confusion when my mother announced during one of her infrequent visits that she was about to marry a man named Malcolm.

Sometime in 1969 he attended a job interview for the position of estimator for an internationally based company.

He had been trained as a quantity surveyor (the person who manages the cost of construction projects), and if he made the right impression with his prospective employer, then it would greatly benefit him and his fiancée financially, but, unbeknownst to the family, the knock-on effect would put an unacceptable distance between Nana and me!

Before I knew it, Treyford was closed for the winter holidays and Christmas had arrived.

Covering the whole of the dining-room table was a Lego train set with blue railway tracks, a passenger station, a signal box, a traditional crossing, and a battery-powered locomotive pulling four carriages.

I shall always remember this visual impression that greeted me first thing on Christmas morning and can quite imagine the family spent hours putting it together under pressure to get it finished before I woke up.

Andrew had spent a small fortune on this, and little did any of us realise, but his choice of Lego would not only provide me with years of entertainment to follow, but would become the basic ‘building blocks’ that guided my choices in the future!

1970

Movement

Falling off a bicycle and starting school life were all very interesting, but they were nothing compared to the experiences that I would embark upon in this, my seventh year!

You could say that it was a ‘turning point’, but then people might laugh at you for talking to yourself while reading this book, so perhaps you’d better not!

Aunt Betty and Uncle Donald moved to the historic town of Sevengables, south of Baringfold, at about the same time that Malcolm took a flight to Canada to set up house in the city of Dovebale in the province of Manitoba after a successful interview with Cubeling Construction.

Mum’s departure was postponed until she could resolve matters with her ex-husband concerning child support.

A judicial battle ensued, and my mother won custody of me due to Andrew’s limited finances.

Because I was being uprooted to a new country, a condition was implemented whereby Andrew did not have to pay maintenance fees.

The loss of that particular bonus just added fuel to my mother’s prejudiced attitude toward my birth father.

The result of this horrific news had a devastating effect upon Nana, as her ‘surrogate son’ was about to be despatched thousands of miles away to a new country.

This was unbearable for her to think about and was probably a stressful experience, but in the back of her mind she started to devise a terrific scheme to ensure that all was not lost.

In the summer, just before leaving boarding school, I received my end-of-term report.

Mrs Howard (the principal/owner of the school) commented, ‘He is making steady progress, if a little slowly,’ which I am sure she put on most of the students’ reports.

But perhaps the most accurate comment was from the sports teacher, who wrote, ‘Not really interested. Behaviour still leaves much to be desired. Needs much more concentration.’

Did I mention that I didn’t like sports?

By September Mum was already in Canada and had married Malcolm, and in October, after a camping trip with my aunt and uncle, it was time for me to go and join them.

I watched in fascination as my suitcases disappeared into a mysterious hole at the check-in counter at Spearshot airport.

I was too young to appreciate the emotional turmoil that this situation had brought about as my primary concern was whether or not I would be reunited with my Lego bricks.

There was a dramatic moment when Nana refused to let me go to the departure lounge, but an air hostess then took on the role of guardian and escorted me onto the plane, showing me the reserved window seat.

The airline personnel were a little conscientious about a seven year old boy travelling unaccompanied over three and a half thousand miles, but I wasn’t nervous in the least bit.

If anything, I was in awe of my surroundings.

The BOAC Boeing 707 glided swiftly into the air, and I watched in amazement as all the buildings began to shrink in size and then disappeared into the distance.

My ears popped as we rose above cloud level, and I settled into my seat and watched the formation of the strange cotton wool shapes hovering just below us.

Once the plane landed, I was treated like royalty by being rushed past the throng of passengers, given a speedy customs clearance, and taken straight into the arrivals hall to be met by my parents.

The journey to Hayburough was also an interesting experience, with the drastic change of surroundings putting me into a kind of sensory overload.

It seemed that everything was mixed up, decidedly larger and all the wrong way around!

Our apartment was one of three positioned on a piece of land between four intersecting road junctions (commonly referred to by the North Americans as a ‘block’).

It was called Halford Plaza on Sissingbin Road.

The structures dwarfed a swimming pool and a children’s play area in the middle.

The tallest building was twenty storeys high; another was only five, whereas ours was in between, rising twelve floors above ground level.

Although, having said that, because of the famous superstition about the thirteenth floor being unlucky, the larger apartment, although it was considered twenty stories high, actually consisted of nineteen floors!

Logically, as our building fell just short of that mysterious figure, we didn’t have the same numerical riddle on our hands, unless of course you thought of the roof as the thirteenth floor. If you were up there and fell off . . . that’s pretty unlucky!

As for the little building—they simply couldn’t count that high!

Halford Public School was a mere ten minutes’ walk from the apartments, and my mother accompanied me on the first day.

I found myself quite unnerved by her overbearing quality and felt that all eyes were upon me because of the decibel level of her voice.

I was nervous enough as it was, even without her interference, but it came something of a shock when I discovered that I was going to be in a classroom were girls were present!

I can’t work in the same room as girls; they’re supposed to go to another school!

Miss Van Hoffman, my teacher here in grade two, was tolerant of my shortcomings, as I had already missed a month’s worth of education; it took me a while to catch up and get my bearings amidst the ponytails and skipping ropes.

I befriended two boys of my own age within the first few days.

Both of them were into sports in a big way, so it was a little difficult to build a rapport with them.

Raymond was competitive by nature, and Ralph, who happened to live in the same apartment as me, was a member of a local lacrosse team of which his father (soon to become friends with Malcolm) was the coach.

I was still struggling to bond with my parents when the colder weather descended upon us.

The Christmas spirit was everywhere, and our modern apartment was no different in that Malcolm came home from work one day with a tree that was fun to put together.

It could easily have passed for an authentic one, and it was adorned with a star that I manufactured from card, kitchen foil, and a little imagination.

1971

Enemy of the Sun

I felt somehow that this new life in Canada was going to be very rewarding.

My thoughts were proved correct when I received a Hornby model railway for my birthday—a step up from the Lego set, which had arrived from England in a huge wooden crate along with all my other belongings.

There were other interesting aspects to my new life, such as learning to bowl and skate, and I was even coaxed into joining a lacrosse team . . . much to the dismay of the other players, as I was about as talented as a lump of rock!

Fun and games aside, the sharing of a mixed educational environment had me completely baffled!

The boys and girls in my class had grown accustomed to each other’s company, but I had trouble adjusting, especially when they started insulting each other.

I showed my indifference to the war of the sexes by being bold and suggesting an