Chapter 1-6

The idealist, Friedrich Hegel, said "A man who has work that suits him and a wife, whom he loves, has squared his accounts with life." nice thought, and as it happens true. When asked for an example on a paradox, one of my favourite philosophers replied. "You’re dammed if you do and you’re dammed if you don't." - Bart Simpson. He was also right, had I not seen it with my own eyes I would not have believed it. My dad needed work, but here is the paradox. Yes he had done something wrong, yes he had been caught and yes he had done his time. The problem is society doesn't see it like that, once you've gone 'through the system' you’re a marked man, for life. He worked as a milkman for a while, and the dairy was very kind to him, but that does not bring in a lot of money and it wasn’t long before the whole family was suffering. You see dad had a wife whom he loved, but not work that suited him, and he was definitely dammed if he did and dammed if he didn’t. So during the summer holidays of my last year of junior school, mum and dad, sold our house in our leafy tree lined avenue and up sticks and left.

I will never forget the excitement, the anticipation and the sheer onslaught of emotions as we got in the car and headed off, not only were we moving, we were moving to a shop. Mum and dad had bought a small seaside shop out on the east coast. This was it a new start, a new school, dad was answerable to no man and things could really get going again. It was a fantastic time, we lived above the shop, the place had 4 floors and loads of rooms, mum and dad even gave me a room, right at the very top, for a den. I flourished at school, getting good grades and marks in everything I did, I was in school performance after school performance and my end of year report was the best I could ever hope for. I had friends and a bike and a park to ride it round. I even changed physically, you see I was a small scrawny little thing until about 12, when I had my tonsils removed, I was suffering really badly with tonsillitis, I would be down with it every few weeks at one stage and the doctor said it was probably stunting my growth, it was. After the operation and over the next 18 months I went from a 6 stone weakling to over six feet tall and build like a brick out house.

We were at the shop for about a year, and mum and dad managed to turn it into a thriving business, so much so that the long hours and hard work were killing them, so they decided that they would sell the shop, buy a house somewhere no one knew dad and he could get a job. It seemed like a plan at the time, they sold the shop bought a caravan, and for the whole of the summer we travelled around the UK looking at houses and places to live and work. Wales is where we finally settled down. Well I say settled down, the next 4 years were interesting to say the least…