Sticks and Stones 5

By midnight, the crowd were back and happy to see us. Those who had concerns as to why we were there began to relax, so I brought out the whisky and lagers and turned up the ghetto-blaster. When all that ran out with the batteries, I went down the road with one of them to get more alcohol from the local 24 hour shop but by the time I got back, it was obvious something had gone on.
While Steve was heating up the Christmas cake and Suzie was talking to an old man with meningitis, one of the crowd had nicked Suzie’s video camera from inside the van and run off. As I began to chase the bloke with the camera, he suddenly turned to face me shining a knife in his hand and told me to fuck off if I wanted to stay in one piece. The ghetto-blaster, meanwhile, was being swiped from Steve (he’d dropped the cake with all the aggro going on).
The guy who couldn’t go home stuck about, although the crowd dispersed quickly once the new beers were gone.
I didn’t feel cheated when we headed off back down to Guildford, and Suzie didn’t care a bit about the camera, but I did feel like I’d cut through the myth that surrounds homelessness.
I could lay that ghost to rest, I thought back then, but now, with the thought of leaving home and living with consequences, I can’t help thinking that I must stay, even if it’s only to help myself get better, so I can be good for the family’s sake.
My temper, swearing, smoking, stressing and boozing has to be greatly reduced for me to stand a chance of anything more than survival within the family.
To enrich my life, I have to learn to live with myself before I can truly give to the family. But is that possible? Can I be The Beaten Man and flourish, or will I be beaten by my own unfathomable immaturity?
Back to Hanif Kureishi’s book, Intimacy, I can’t help thinking that Immaturity would have been a far better title. I’d love to know whether the illustrious writer believes himself to be anything but immature, because my overwhelming identification with his book comes from my own enduring immaturity that has held me back for so long. I aspire to making a career out of my meandering life. There are plenty like me.
Whilst eating my breakfast of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and coffee at the café across the road from the hotel this morning, I read about the Fathers4Justice’s martyr of the moment, Guy Harrison, who has been ostracised from his baby and disallowed contact. He was pictured phoning a friend from Big Ben’s turret with a sign saying ‘For Fawkes Sake, Change Family Law’. I found the pun amusing but once I’d read the small print, it turned out that this Guy was just another millionaire company director seeking personal publicity. He lives in a CCTV-riddled private estate in West Sussex.
Why had the mother of his child refused him access so early on? Because he refused to marry her. She probably saw from the outset of her mistake that he would only regard their child as a business trophy, a confidence-bonus to gain the trust of new clients. And so she denied him, as he had denied her the happiness and stabliity of a good wife.
Guy Harrison is probably a Blairite, living uniquely for his own handsome solitude in the cruel world to which he belongs. If he sees fit to climb Big Ben and be photographed by the press under the banner of fathers’ rights, that’s his problem. He’ll wake up one day, when it’s too late, and he’ll find cancer of the rollocks, a fitting illness for an oversexed, undermatured, egocentric headline-grabber.
As for the young lady he impregnated, I wish you all the best. Move forward with pride, woman, and don’t let anyone take your offspring for granted.
One of the best things about Suzie is her massive heart. She has more love in there than seems biologically possible. It’s like a honey pot that refills itself; soft and gooey like the blood surrounding the heart.
The children have begun to get to grips with their French schools, largely because of her patient homeworking with them. With her love, their homework becomes a pleasure and not a chaw. With her love, their personalities grow and their eye for good develops. With her fathomless love, all three children stand a good chance of being centred human beings.
Sickening, isn’t it? And how contradictory you must think I am.
I’ll promise to read to Griff and forget, then he’ll remind me after dinner and I’ll tell him SpongeBob Squarepants is on NickToons. And off we go to lie down together on the parental bed watching something that might make us laugh (if we’re relaxed enough), rather than reading something that opens our mind and brings us closer together.
When I was convincing Maddy that France was a great place to live, back in Woking, I promised her we’d write long stories together and get them published under her name with the help of my friend at Macmillan’s.
When she went ahead and did it herself, I was awestruck by the clarity and depth of her writing, and decided that it would be best for her to carry on alone as I couldn’t fault her on anything she’d written.
Having read each Harry Potter book at least six times, Maddy was at one with words in a way I resented. I recalled my own early stabs at literature after reading The Rats by James Herbert twice, but Maddy was streets ahead of me. I resigned myself to thinking that I couldn’t help her even if I tried.
Cheap options cost dear in the long run and there’s distance between us now. All the children have heard me tearing my hair out and throwing cups around the place. I say with no sense of satisfaction that I have smashed various toys and charms in an attempt to cancel out my pain on one occasion, and have sworn at and goaded their mother into hitting me when she would only spit on countless occasions.
One downside is that Maddy gave up writing soon afterwards and has not returned to the keyboard since.
I remember promising Suzie that I would take care of Clara in the afternoons so that she could outline her defence to the courts during the two-year custody battle with her ex-husband, or go into town and meet a friend, but I hardly ever did. The few times I tried were cut short when Clara did things I wasn’t sure were allowed, only to traipse back into the study with Clara kicking and screaming for more of me while I demanded help from Suzie on the phone with a red face full of confusion and inadequacy.
Add to this that I have left in haste to flee their mother and the full force of family life over thirty times in the past three years and you will no doubt have your jaw on the table, wondering why they ever took me back.
I pray that the reason is simple, that I’m not alone in thinking that I’m not completely bad, and that hope allows us to live optimistically even when all seems lost. Hope stems from love and reaches out to every human emotion. It makes life worth living. It heals the elderly and encourages the young. It opens a bright, new path where, without it, there would be only a dark, frustrating impasse. Hope warms the hearty and cools the confused.
Life never gives us more than we can take.
When we eat too much, we fall asleep. When we drink too much, we throw up. When we smoke too much, we are given signs of heart trouble. When we earn too much, we give presents. When we fail too much, we are presented with new ideas. When we think too much, the brain cuts off. When our hearts cry out for love, it is presented to us, like water to the thirsty. God is like a good woman; they only come to you when you’re ready.
But sometimes, we don’t see it until it has dried up and disappeared in front of our eyes. We don’t listen to the ticker, or the mind, or the conscience. And we don’t remember our dreams and lose sight of goals.
Hope must be preserved at all costs.
Look at Liverpool in that brilliant Champions League Final. Three-nil down at half-time against an AC Milan team that hadn’t conceded three goals in one match for three years, let alone in one half of a match.
But Gerrard headed a goal early on after the break, then Smicer fired one in….the rest is what history, and hope, is all about.
When Liverpool ended up outside the top four in the English league and Fifa initially declined their inclusion to the next season’s Champions League, Fifa were talked into allowing them to defend their title ‘wholly because of the manner in which they won the cup’. Hope had provided Liverpool with the cup and the right to defend it for future prosperity. Hope had seen the most security–conscious sports body in the world make an unprecedented change to their sternly held rulebook.
Hope, it has to be said, is something in short supply in Liverpool, but that only emphasises how hope can win at any odds. You could have got a thousand to one for Liverpool to win at half-time, but to most Liverpool fans, you don’t need money to have hope. In fact, financial reward often dampens the true spirit of hope. The fans just stuck to their seats in the pubs with one hand on the pint and the other flicking v-signs at the screen when anyone seemed to be harming one of their players. Poetic justice would be theirs because they had willed it.
AC Milan’s arrogance lost the game for them. At half-time, they assumed that Liverpool would lie down and wait for the final whistle but, with their laziness, the resilience of the Liverpool players grew in strength. However downtrodden they were, they would not be beaten, all thanks to hope. They frightened Milan, turning their feet to lead and their muscles to jelly when Smicer scored the second. No wonder Liverpool won on penalties; they’d come back from the dead.
I admit that my team, Arsenal, could never have pulled off the same as Liverpool. Arsenal and London define tradition and skullduggery, whereas Liverpool is the capital of desperation and injustice. Only there can a person grasp the true nature of hope in all its beauty.
Liverpudlian crooks are the most feared in Britain because they have seen the most.
Rocky springs to mind. I can see Stallone holding up his baby girl after the big fight looking like the Elephant Man with tears and blood running down his face. He had to come from Brooklyn.
If only I could do something worthwhile, I might be able to hold Clara up to the light.
From Andorra? Writing this? Who knows? One must have hope.
If only I could take life seriously, which scares me to death, I might be able to do something good with it, which doesn’t scare me to death. What scares me most is having to tow the line of the normalised father-figure. There’d be no time for pubs, for a start, and I’m sure that my writing, music and photography would be badly sidelined in pursuit of teaching Clara to write her own first words on a sheet of A4.
Am I so self-centred that I can’t teach my own daughter the basics for fear of never being published?