And so to the early days and school and the Rampant grandparent...

Thinking about my writings of yesterday made me realise what a tough life Dad must have lived especially, to crown it all, he was snuffed from this world at such an early age, at  just 53.  It also made me realise how much I missed him and even more how much of him I and my children haven't had due to his early death.  I only really got to know him in the last few years of his life and even these were tainted by his illness.  Despite our tentative relationship during those early years, he was and still is much loved and a great loss to me now and in the years since he left us.


Despite his rejection by his own father it is a puzzle to me now to understand why Dad in turn rejected me as his son in many ways? I would have thought he would have gone to great lengths to not repeat his own history with me? Having said that, when I really begin to dig down, it is perhaps much more understandable after all...


I was certainly a soppy child and never felt that I met any of his expectations as a son. I was labelled a cry baby and was painfully shy, sensitive and not at all a 'lad'. I wasn't any good at sport, tended to behave myself at all times and never did anything wrong other than to spray  the newly decorated living room at No 42 with car polish. I thought it was fly spray. It was during one of those balmy summer Sunday mornings when Mum and Dad were at church and the house was invaded by flying ants in search of love...although I was too young at 8 to realise this at the time. I can still see their faces when they arrived home and the resultant experiments with 'K2R' stain remover later in their vain attempts to get rid of the massive waxy splodges all over the wallpaper....Perhaps it was because they had been at church that saved me from the mega hiding I expected and I got off lightly with just a mini beating....  And yes, parents did  leave such young children on their own in those days. I used to play out in the street too. 


School proved to be a horrendous experience for me, especially for the first few primary years. Enter the Roman Catholic Church and all its rules, rituals and ridiculousness! Enter bullying and peer group pressure.. Enter  The Sisters of Charity and the dreaded  Marist Brothers..... My experiences in a catholic primary school back in the 1950/60's were grim but given the reality of some situations and the bad press the catholic church has recently had, I deem myself lucky that things were not as bad as they could have been.  


I wasn't a good scholar and in fact didn't get the hang of reading until I was about 10 years old. This was due to two main things.. a) I was never read to by my parents and reading and the love of books wasn't a priority in our family, and b) I couldn't see. I wasn't ever any good at maths either.


A routine school nurse inspection for nits and all that in the last year of my primary education revealed that I couldn't see the classic opticians test board on the wall. Not even the big letters. As I didn't notice my disability due to me not being aware of what the world should look like, I didn't realise there was a problem. I thought the world was in perpetual fog and I put it down to the gas works down the road... Saltley Gasworks or as it was more commonly known, the Ghastly Salt Works.... And it was, after all,  the 1960's with coal fires being the norm. 



Mum, being Irish and from devout catholic stock, brought with her into the family all the fear and obedience that the Church demanded. Dad was a originally a  typical English Church of England follower who only followed at births marriages and deaths. No spiritual heritage from him ensued until he met Mum, was smitten, and then had to covert to the catholic religion in order to get married. So in a sense my bad time at school was due to her, kind of, and also her cultural  background  which had an enormous effect on my whole life and Dad's.   This wasn't just down to the power of that anyone's mum will have on their offspring but with my Mum it was something much more. 


Mum was a complex character. Her upbringing had been totally different to Dad's in one major way. She was brought with love. Despite being part of a large Irish family living in what was basically a  two bedroomed first floor flat with no hot water, no bathroom and three flights of stairs to reach the threshold. They were poor but nurtured and had an amazing family bond which held them all together when times were difficult... Often caused by Granddad's philandering....   When I say no bathroom that's not strictly true. There was a bathroom. It was one flight of stairs down and that's where they kept the coal. I still don't know how they kept clean and my later deductions tend to suggest to me that they actually weren't! I do know that in England around this time there was a view abroad about 'the dirty Irish', something later that Mum  was to devote great time and effort in dispelling in regards to the way No 42 was kept..... Spotless!  




The McGuire family was made up of Granddad Thomas McGuire, the red nosed grey haired fiddle playing playboy with the charisma, humour and charm to beguile any young lady to fall at his feet.  Granny Rose McGuire was one such lady who stood out from the crowd and became the 'missus'.  In a world devoid of contraception and ruled by the church, 13 pregnancies followed with seven survivors, Mum being the eldest and yes, the reason why they were married. 


I always wondered why Granddad  slept on a couch in the large living room whilst Granny slept with Margaret, one of mum's sisters with special needs (as we call it today) in a partitioned off area of the communal large bedroom where everyone else slept. Margaret suffered from epilepsy.  As we only visited during holiday times the resultant and  necessary wheeling and dealing of bedroom space to accommodate us was normal and our roughing it was all part of the fun. I always thought that the Granddad / Granny sleeping arrangement  was due to our visit and Margaret's needs... It was only in later years the family history revealed that it was actually doctor's orders, being  his view  that.... 'Mr McGuire, you only have to hang your trousers over the end of the bed for Mrs McGuire to get pregnant' . Hence the said arrangements which also became the reason Granddad allowed himself the several on the side female liaisons which the insatiable Thomas pursued throughout his long marriage to Rose. This included an event which went down in family legend...The day the Mistress came for tea.  


...but that's another story.