Happy 70th Birthday

My Dad's seventy today. He won't be able to read this because he hasn't got a computer or access to one, still as it's my blog I'll post anyway!

As you probably know from previous postings I've had an up and down relationship with my parents over the past twenty five years or so but I can't complain about my childhood which was brilliant, and if I can be half the parent to Nathalie that mine were to me during the first twenty years of my life then I think I will be happy.

We never had holidays away as a family, my Dad was a self-employed driving instructor for most of my childhood and although self-employment suggests some sort of financial freedom back in the sixties it was as much a constraint as a path to unbridled happiness. What time we did spend together often involved playing football or cricket or going to the beach or reinacting WW2 battles on the model he built in the garage (I think this is something Span among others also did back in the late sixties of early seventies), a piece of chipboard on which papier mache hills had been placed along with airfix models of various regiments and nations. When my Dad had been five he'd spent a year in hospital with a lung infection and that combined with my Grandad's absence with the army from 1939-1946 meant that he was never close to his father in the way he was with me and my brother.

Dad had been a good amateur footballer and from a very early age he encouraged me to develop my skills, I would spend hours running up and down the garden in and out of garden canes with a ball at my feet, up the garden with my right foot then down with my left and then alternating with both feet. He was a good spin bowler as well and from a very early age me and my brother were taught the delights of being hit on the legs by a proper cricket ball, none of the tennis ball wussy stuff.

Financial problems meant that we lost our home twice and were 'kicked out' for three days on another occassion as the mortgage hadn't been paid. The first time was bad luck, we'd moved from Essex principally because he was employed at the time by a driving school who saw the South Coast as a good future market, unfortunately they were losing money in Essex and Kent and eventually they went bust in late 1968, a year after our move, leaving my parents unable to pay the mortgage and with two small(ish) children.

Things haven't been great between us for the past twenty five years for a number of reasons and it seems ironic that I spend a lot of my 'free time' researching my family history whilst not getting on with those family members who are still alive.

Anyway, as I said at the start, happy birthday Dad.