Wednesday 27 February 2013

3 Little Angels part 1

Darkness, darkness and peace. There's nothing else, there's no bright light to head into, just darkness. I'm not even aware of it really, just drifting on through, through and to the end. An ending before the middle though, before its' time surely. There is something. On the periphery of my sub conscience I can make out 3 little shapes. Angels? Gotta be Angels. Do angels talk though? These are talking, no crying, crying a word if that's possible. I can't quite make it out though and that darkness is somehow comfortable, easy, it's engulfing me and i'm happy to let it. Why fight it? why bother? "Daddy", that's what they're saying "Daaddy, DON'T GO!"

I am mid divorce. It's a nightmare the first big split of your life and this has been just that. I reckon it's an 18 month process getting through, getting to the point where you don't wake up everyday and think you can fix it, but that's in hindsight and i'm not using that just now, it's all here and now, all hurt and regret and argument and the slow slow recovery. But I've made a big step, a step out of the door and away at least. I've just moved back up to Leamington from East Sussex and have got my taxi badge through. I've sorted out a flat to live in, even moved my stuff up from Sussex where the semi ex and my 3 Daughters live.

It's not ideal but I know I have to do it, get away from the circles of repetitive hate, away from the constant reminders and the 3 girls who have done nothing to deserve the atmosphere surrounding them. I don't really want to drive a cab in Leamington, it's what my Dad has done for the last 18 years and whilst there's nothing wrong with following in his footsteps it's going to be a large shadow to climb out from. But it's done, i'm gone and ready to make this new start. Or i was, before that phone call....

"Just pop down and watch the girls will you? I've got to go to the dentist, a few hours is all..." That was all it was, and who'd have thought one little bit of attempted fathering could lead to so much. I'm just coming off the M25 and heading into East Sussex when the phone rings again, "it's ok, I don't need you to come now..." Well that's just great but I'm kinda already there now and not overly happy. I decide that having lived and worked down in Sussex for a while, having a few mates around, it being a Friday night, it being me and me, being in a kinda pissed off state of mind it must be about beer o'clock!

Kieran was my old night shift buddy. Kieran was going to kill me.We had a great set up in the care home we worked at, they reckoned it took 2 staff to sit there all night doing fuck all and who were we to argue. We'd get the chores done early, wait till everyone was off to kip and then take it in turns catching up on sleep! Great little number as long as the awake guy stayed awake! Anyhow, Kieran was the closest mate, literally,  to me when I'd got the 'abort abort' phone call and so it was him i called. "Yeah, having a few beers tonight with some mates" he says, "yeah sure come along, the more the merrier".

And so it transpired. The first pub i visited, The Horseshoe inn, Herstmonceux, was a great little venue for a night out and there was a birthday bash on too. It was the second pub I was to visit that would cause the problems... I remember pool, vodka, beer, dancing. joining up with the birthday crowd and having a good night and a nice catch up and then i don't remember much. Not from being too far gone but from Kieran driving me into the second pub (The Woolpack inn, on a nasty little junction in the centre of Herstmonceux) at about 50mph!

They say you blank out what your mind finds too hard to process and it's true. I have vague recollections of arguing about walking, then even vaguer ones about being scared, and i must of been as I put on my seatbelt (unusual for me, especially drunk!). But the crash, or the run up to it, is a blank. I'm guessing it's locked up in a little file somewhere at the back of my brain, locked, padlocked, chained and not going to open any time soon as I've tried to bring it back but to no avail. Apparently Kieran was racing a mate back to his house where the party was due to continue, took the corner at an impossible speed and boom! All the impact was on my (the passenger) side, I was thrown into the footwell, crushed from the 3 people in the back flying forwards with the impact, crushed by the engine being forced into me when we hit the 300 year old pub wall and it decided it was not really interested in moving!

It took them a while to get me out apparently, the old jaws of life of the so undervalued fire service and the life saving efforts of the heroic ambulance crew. I died, i think in the ambulance or maybe just before. They brought me back and then i died again en route to the hospital. "CLEAR" baboom! how many times have you seen this on tv?! back again and stabilised at the hospital and all I can see, all I can envisage and recall is darkness, an all enveloping darkness... oh, i think is where we came in.

Thank you my 3 little angels x


Monday 25 February 2013

Swimming

Did you know that diving is the new smoking? It is! It's got to be bad for you... I've just took my lad for his swimming lesson and it's everywhere, as soon as you walk into the leisure centre  there's a warning sign up 'NO DIVING', I'm suprised there wasn't one in the changing rooms... Oh and that was another thing, i walked into the 'MENS' changing room to find women and girls everywhere, me and my boy turned round and walked back out to check the sign on the door, yup right room but someone obviously hadn't told them... what's going on? Anyhow, the pool is maybe 20 metres in length and plastered all over the back wall are 'NO DIVING' signs, 5 of them!

I'm sure in my day we used to dive didn't we? i mean i remember a few horror stories about Johnny who'd banged his head but i remember diving in on a regular basis, i think it was one of the highlights of swimming to practice how cool your dive was! When does a jump become a dive? When did a dive become an illegal maneuver? When did you need 5 bloody great signs to all say the same thing?

I'm pondering this, sat up in the sauna like higher echelons of the viewing gallery when i notice about 5 or 6 kids swimming by in their pyjamas doing a backstroke whilst holding an imaginary brick on their chests. Yeah, i know...! What ever happened to the big black rubber brick you used to have to dive, yes DIVE (!!!) to rescue for the lifesaver badge back in the day... I must have saved at least 6 or 7 bricks attaining my lifesavers' badge and where are they? They can't have all drowned surely?!! These kids today have to use air bricks! 'just hold your hands like this and imagine a brick'?  ahh, it's a shame, maybe they've been retired and there's fields of them somewhere overlooking a pond and shivering from the memory of the deep end! 

Where was I? Oh yeah, the 'NO DIVING' signs... everywhere... Didn't there used to be a bit of variety, 'No Running', 'No Shouting', 'Non swimmers not allowed beyond this point' to name a few. All gone now it seems... just 'NO DIVING!' everywhere...

And haven't the 'lifeguards' got a lot more miserable these days, i mean what is it they get trained in? How to blow a whistle in the most annoying way possible repeatedly? I mean really really annoyingly with little tweety whistling techniques designed to show their levels of concern! A little peepy one for minor indiscretions such as waving at your mum, an elongated screechy one for quite serious ones such as gently throwing your kid in the air in a playful manner and the one that really makes you want to shove that whistle right up their arse is the repeated high pitch shrill peep peep peep when you attempt a dive! 

It's not just the lifeguard staff though it's the counter staff that seem trained up in pedantry now... I remember a few months back i tried to take two of my kids swimming... ohh no, that was a no go situation from the off. 'You need two adults for two children' they say... well i managed to get the two of them up this morning, dress them, feed them, in fact i seem to remember that on our last holiday they were both (and don't call childline) in the pool at the same time without any parents... where was i? i was practicing my diving in the deep end of the big pool!!!