Personal Blogs

Been writing quite a few monologues lately. This being a skool holiday, I've been too distracted to get round to writing a blog today, so here's a monolgue I wrote a couple of weeks ago for my writing circle:

I was six or seven the first time I heard my mother swear. I was in my bedroom, looking for comics under the bed, and she walked into the room just as I stood up. ‘Fucking hell!’ she said, ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ She looked shocked, and I think I probably did too. I don’t know how she hadn’t heard me coming in. I’d heard her singing in the kitchen, so maybe she had been listening to the radio and it had drowned out the sound of the door and my run up the stairs. Or maybe she had heard me but forgotten. She was very forgetful, but I didn’t know why back then.

I say it was the first time I heard her swear, but with hindsight I suspect it’s just the first time I remember her swearing. Awareness about things like that tends to creep up on kids, because they just take whatever comes as normal and don’t notice the weird stuff until something happens to make them notice it. It was probably other kids talking about swearing and effing and jeffing in the playground that had brought the word “fuck” to my attention.

After that first time I started noticing it more and more. I didn’t like it, because I knew from those playground discussions that swearing was rude and wrong and I didn’t like thinking that way about my mum. I became quite puritanical about it for a while, telling off the other kids when they swore and even getting into fights over it. Then I noticed other kid’s parents swearing too and realised my dad, when he was around, was even worse, so it just became normal again.

The fact that she was boozing took longer to creep up on me. I noticed she sometimes sounded a bit funny – like she couldn’t find the right words or was having trouble saying them – and that she was forgetful and clumsy, but I had no context to put those things in. When you saw drunk people on the telly they could hardly speak or walk at all, and though I did see mum like that occasionally I never associated it with the other, milder stuff. Later I noticed all sorts of things – the mood swings and the bitter smell on her breath that the fags couldn’t hide being only the tip of the iceberg. I started to notice more and more, and I started to resent it. I was ashamed, but felt guilty for feeling that way. I loved her, but pushed her away so I wouldn’t have to see.

She was Irish, my mum, and while I know it makes her drinking a bit of a cliché there’s no point beating about the bush. I don’t know if that was part of it, but drinking was certainly a family trait. She had a sister, Monica, who “liked a drink” too, and I can remember her brother, Martin, staying with us for a week or two and things going seriously off the rails. He was fall-about drunk for the entire visit and everyone was relieved when he got back on the ferry and went home after a row with my dad. It hadn’t come to blows, but came pretty close. Mum told Martin he had to go the next morning and Monica said she wouldn’t take him in. He kipped a few nights on the sofa of someone he got talking to in a pub but soon wore out his welcome. Mum, Monica and Martin cried when he got in the taxi, but as it turned the corner at the end of the road Monica said ‘thank fuck for that!’ and she and mum almost pissed themselves laughing.

My dad came from the West Country – Penzance I think – but had fallen out with his parents so never went back. He ‘liked a drink’ too but was a randy old bastard with it. When he got too old to chase women the drink took over completely, but by then he’d been out of my life for years and we didn’t really keep in touch. I’d meet up with him once or twice a year or bump into him in town sometimes, but it was never very pleasant. He’d tap me for a few quid and tell me what a great son I was and how sorry he was for being such a shit father. Then he’d start telling me how everything was mum’s fault and he hadn’t really stood a chance. They both blamed each other like that – it was quite funny in an odd sort of way.

He left mum for good when I was fourteen, after a blazing, drunken fight over his latest bit on the side. Mum stabbed him in the shoulder with the knife she used for peeling vegetables and he had to go to hospital. He told them it was a mugging to keep the police off of mum’s back, but he moved out the next day. Usually, when he moved in with another woman, they’d get sick of him and he’d end up back on mum’s doorstep, but Shirley seemed even more desperate to keep him than mum had been and stayed with him almost to the end. He’d pop back occasionally from the pub with mum and they’d get reacquainted, but mum always made sure to let Shirley know and eventually dad cottoned on that shitting on your own ex-doorstep was never going to be a viable proposition. Mum really started hitting the bottle after that.

He died seven years ago, two years after mum. Shirley phoned me the day before the funeral, but I didn’t really feel anything. I know that sounds terrible, but I didn’t really know him. It could have been anyone in that box. The vicar mentioned me as the only child and Shirley gave me a little smile, but I don’t think anyone else there had a clue who I was. Dad’s sister from Penzance was there supported by her daughter, but I didn’t stop to speak to them. They looked as bewildered as I did. I heard some ignorant bastard behind me whispering a joke as the coffin slid through the curtain; that old chestnut about it taking them three days to put the fire out. I wanted to deck him, but just looked at the floor instead. Afterwards, I couldn’t get away fast enough. I didn’t go back for the tea or anything like that.

Mum’s funeral was a different kettle of fish, a proper wake with loads of her family coming over. Monica sorted it all out and it was a fantastic send off, more of a party, really. I stayed until midnight, but then they started reminiscing about the good old days in Ireland and their childhoods and stuff, so I got out before it all turned teary. It meant fuck all to me, and the person they were describing was nothing like the mother I had known. Uncle Martin wasn’t there. He’d killed himself years before with a Wilkinson Sword razorblade. Funny, that, because the family said it was a mortal sin, whereas he’d been killing himself with whisky for years and it would have only been a matter of time. I think in Ireland suicide’s only a mortal sin if you do it quickly. If you take the slow option of a pickled liver and renal failure or drive under the influence into a brick wall or a school bus full of kids the almighty doesn’t give a fuck.

 
I moved out when I was nineteen. I’d just finished my two year apprenticeship with a firm of electricians and gone on to full salary, which was enough to set myself up in a small rented flat. It was tiny, really, more of a bedsit, but I had half shares with the girl downstairs of a landing with a kitchen and a bathroom. She was a right dirty cow – never cleaned either of them. It drove me mad for a year or so because I was quite particular about that sort of thing, but then as I got more used to having my own space and started earning more money for pubbing and clubbing I got as bad as her. I didn’t live there for long because I met Carol. We rented a place together the year I turned twenty three and put the deposit down on our first flat a couple of years later.

I was working my bollocks off for the next ten years or so. I’d started a business with one of my mates, Gary, and we were getting tons of work from a couple of local building developers. Technically we were sparks, but we could both turn our hands to anything so we were raking it in. Gary followed the lead of the developers we were working for, but Carol was more interested in family, so that’s the way we went. We kept upgrading houses, though, and needed to as the kids came along. Four in total, one boy, three girls. Jamie came last; otherwise we might have stopped at two or three.

I was drinking more by then, but hadn’t noticed it sneaking up. Usual old bollocks, needing one to ‘wind down’ after a hard day’s graft and that gradually turning into two or three. Wine at the weekends when Gary and his latest flame came for dinner or we had other friends around, and a few jars in the nineteenth after golf two or three times a week.

I lost my license on the way back from the golf club. Two year ban. Gary stuck by me, ferrying me backwards and forwards and only taking on two man jobs, but once the driving wasn’t an issue I started drinking even more. Got my license back in March ’95, lost it again in July of the same year. Gary asked to buy me out of the business. Things weren’t exactly booming then, so he had me over a barrel, the bastard. I’ve not spoken to him since.

I tried going back on the cards but everyone wanted driving, so I was right up shit creek. I was borrowing on the house to keep things going, but it was all slipping away.

Things were pretty awful by then with Carol. She was never a drinker, and couldn’t understand. I tried to say it was in the blood, but she wasn’t having any of it – said it was just a bloody good excuse for not tackling it head on. She asked for a temporary separation in the winter of ’96. I smashed the house up, and she filed for divorce.

The kids are grown up now. They don’t see me. Carol moved away with them – only a few miles up the road, a couple of towns away, but it might as well be Timbuktu. I made it easy for her really, kept showing up drunk outside the old house and shouting to get in. Smashed up the garden and her car when she moved the new boyfriend in. No judge is going to allow that now, is he? I had access for a while with a social worker present, but I stopped taking it and eventually the judge ruled in her favour for “access at mother’s discretion”. I haven’t seen them since.

I walk past the old house sometimes. The family living there now look really nice.

After we split up I moved back in for a while with mum. We drove each other fucking mad. After the breakdown I got a little council flat – well, housing association, but same difference. That’s where I am now. The walls are damp, the lift smells of piss and the kids on the estate are right little bastards, but it’s better than some have got. I don’t go to the pub anymore – who can afford pub prices – but there’s a nice little offy counter at the checkout in the spar.

But I’m not doing that anymore either. I’ve been sober now for fourteen weeks, and it’s going to stay that way...

So that’s the story so far. Thanks for listening.

My name’s Alan and I’m an alcoholic.

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IN OTHER NEWS:

Nowt to do with the above, which is FICTION, but yesterday I started experimenting with a new hobby and set up a micro-distillery in Ben's bedroom cupboard. It's a BruBox kit for Irish stout (i.e. Guinness-like substances, for those who don't know what stout is), and we were pleased to hear this morning the gentle bubbling of fermenting hops, which will hopefully trickle to an occassional 'burp' over the next ten days or so to indicate the brewing stage is over and we're ready to think about clearing and then sampling... If all goes to plan and it tastes okay we are thinking of trying a London Porter kit next, and will invest in bottles so we can lay some down for Christmas.

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS:

Went slightly off-piste yesterday when adding a comment to a Twitter friend's (or should that be "Twitterquantance's" - I despise and haven't a clue re this whole netiquette thing, so how do you refer to someone you only really know via twitter? Oh for those simple days when you spoke to people rather than avatars - and this from a self-confessed (see prev blog  on alternative life coaching) non-starter when it comes to real-life "doing social") blog yesterday... Turned into an essay, with a bit of a micro-rant thrown in for good measure regarding the word 'misogynistic'. If Ms Kean should happen across this, I'll try to keep it short and sweet in future . In the meantime, any poor, lost wandering soul who's made it this far may find this interesting too, especially if they have an interest in CW.  THIS