One Of Terry's Corners Of the Online World

After yesterday's tumult, today has been much better, which leads me to suspect that a selfish me-day yesterday was the right thing to do. Today I spoke with my mother, my other sister Linda and my friend Grumbles as well as having some deep and meaningful chat with queen_nephthys in the car on the way home from work. I also parsed some diverse information together to get a picture of what's happening with the donor of half of my genes. Seems that it has to be alcohol related. I can recall him having blackouts over thirty years ago after drinking himself dumb. Ten years ago, my brother told me that he was drinking a hell of a lot "but keeping himself clean". He joined a bowling club in the 70s not for the companionship or the sport, but to be able to get a drink on Sundays (back before pubs opened with 7-11 store hours).

Oddly, his alcoholism is the indirect reason why I love movies so much. On Saturdays we kids used to go to the noon matinees at the Regal Cinema in Liverpool because it gave him drinking time without us. They'd show two movies back to back, a lot of which I now have in my DVD collection. If the horse betting went well, there were fish and chips for dinner, if not, a can of something at nine pm when we got home. Ah, the golden days of childhood... talking with the crying lady on the steps of the pub so she wouldn't pick at her wrist with a broken piece of glass, getting shouted ice creams by soldiers back from Vietnam who were happy to see children whom they knew weren't hiding booby-trapped bicycles, watching fistfights on the pavement near Liverpool Station. The memories that are tumbling back as his desert him... I used to think that everyone had a childhood like mine and a father who was covertly brutal. It came as a profound shock to me at around 12 when I realised that there were fathers who were good people and not just pretending to be.