Day 2 500 words

Lets go back.

It all started to go wrong in 1983. The country was in a state, my education had faltered and expulsion was now a reality. All my contemparies were in school all day while I had little to do. It’s not until this happens that you begin to think about what you’ll do with the rest of your life, let alone the rest of the day. You think a day in school drags, try a day when all your so called mates are not around.

I was always a keen walker and had an avid interest in wildlife and the great outdoors. So after a day or two just bumming around, i decided to go on an adventure, walking to a nearby nature reserve and woodland I took out my pad and pencil and begun to draw what I saw. Birds, Dogs, people (I still can’t draw people). What I noticed about my drawings was the detail. The birds were in colour and everything else in grey. Not that it mattered to me, it was the distraction i needed. The day passed quickly and before I knew it, it was time to head home for dinner.

Being the only one of four boys who has been expelled, made for intersting conversation at the dinner table. I’d not only been excluded from school, now I was also excluded form most conversations in the home. I won’t call it a family home as it was not. Two separate families joined and I hated it. I’ll wrote about why another time. My brother and I had a good bond but that was now being tested as his loyalties were drawn to the good side of the table.

So I’d eat in near silence, ask to leave the table when finished and wash my plate and cutlery up, put it away and head up to my room. I’d get a wash and change into my Mod clothes, parka and desert boots. Head out to the local park and see who turned up. Most my age at that time would hang out round the park. It is a huge park with tennis courts, football pitches and at that time a small zoo, with a bear and other animals who smelled like nothing else and really did not look too happy with their accomodation. There was a manor house in the centre of the park where the keeper lived. I always envied the folks living there, I’d have loved to live in teh park. All the fun you could have when it was closed. Mind you we hung around there after dark most week nights.

The fair would always visit and with it a group of what the locals would call Gypos. They were a surly lot in the main but most were just misfits who didnt want to conform. I knew how they felt and had no problem hanging about with them and getting free rides.

I met my first real girlfriend in the park. She was a great girl and we shared so much in common. Broken homes, hot wanting to really fit in, been messed about by our families all of which left us feeling a little disconnected form them. We were together for years and not always wihtout some challenges. We shared a bedsit together for a while but she soon determined it was not a life she wanted for long and set about going to college to learn secretarial skills and was bloody good at it. She landed a job and we drifted apart. I’m not surprised, she was way too good for me and knew some of what she wanted and that I likely would not provide it for her.

Life in the bedsit continued for me and whilst it was bastard cold most nights, had no hot running water either in the room or in the shower and small belling stove withone ring to prepare all meals. It was a hard life for a young lad of 16. No place for one so young I can tell.

But it was there that it all started to go horribly wrong….