Three things I will never forget my parents telling me as I grew up...
PART 1
LOOKING BACK or REFLECTING
Do you reflect on your life and think about what might have been? This can happen at any stage in your life, from your teenage years to somebody like me, an old age pensioner. Wow, just writing those three words makes me feel old! I don’t think I am, though my body says otherwise, particularly after a game of golf or playing with the grandchildren.
They say you shouldn’t have regrets in your life, but I think everybody does, even if they don’t like to admit it. I have regrets, and I’ll come onto those a little later. Perhaps you’re too young to think about looking back. You are only looking to the future, and that’s fine. That’s what you should be doing.
Life is also said to be about living and having a good time. You only have one life, so why not? You can have a good philosophical debate about how you lead your life and what your priorities are. Does it depend on your background and how your parent/s brought you up? Some people live in nice houses and good neighbourhoods, whereas others might live in council houses and in less salubrious areas. Does it matter or make a difference? You only know what you know. At the end of the day, it all depends on your outlook and what you want out of life. It’s about ambition, meeting challenges and determination.
Three things I will never forget my parents telling me as I grew up were to listen. How do you learn if you don’t listen, whether at school, at home, in your job or when you are socialising. Be honest with yourself and others and lastly, work hard. I didn’t always keep to these qualities as a child. I used to pick and choose what I wanted to do, but I always tried to be honest. I have upheld these three simple but important qualities since my late teens, and they haven’t done me any harm. If you look back to your childhood and teen years, I’m sure you will remember being told by your parent/ grandparents of similar qualities. If you did, did you keep up with them in adult life?
Take it from me, life passes by quickly, particularly when things are good and exciting, so make the most of it. Growing up is great. One passes all the usual milestones of childhood to adulthood: first primary and secondary school, first girlfriend, first job, first car, being a responsible adult, marriage, raising children, and following a career. By now, you are in your twenties or thirties, and life is either looking rosy, difficult or indifferent for various reasons. Whatever the situation, however, be positive and always look on the bright side of life. Easier said than done, I know, but try, otherwise you may regret it later.
MY REFLECTIONS
My life has been full of different experiences, mainly good but some bad. I was born in South Wales, in Pontypridd, the same place as Tom Jones, the famous pop star. I lived in Wales for two years, not that I remember it, before my parents moved to Windsor, not far from the famous castle. My parents moved because my dad found another job. We lived on a council estate, in a small three-bedroomed terrace house. I didn’t know then, but we rented two rooms in this house, a front room (lounge) and a bedroom. I slept in the same bedroom as my parents. We shared a kitchen with the owners, two unmarried brothers who lived upstairs in the other two bedrooms. To me, the two men were old and creepy. I was afraid of them and called them the bogeymen. We had no indoor toilet, and I hated having to go outside when it was dark, particularly in the winter when it was cold. Dad used to bring a bucket to the bedroom at night. A tin bath hung on the wall outside, and Sunday was bath night for the family. Mum boiled kettles of water on the gas stove. There wasn’t any electricity, just gas mantles. (Google this if you don’t know what they were)
At the age of one and a half, I had a bad accident. Luckily, I don’t remember anything about it. For some reason, I stood on the seat of one of the dining chairs with a glass of water, and before my mum could reach me, I fell, and the glass broke into pieces and sliced off my top lip. My lip was hanging by a thread. I was rushed to the local doctor’s surgery, and the doctor wanted to cut off the whole lip before going to the hospital. My mum wouldn’t let him. We didn’t have a car. Nobody on the estate did, so my mum and dad carried me to the hospital, which was about 2 miles away. To cut a long story short, I saw a surgeon who told my mum that if the doctor had cut off the whole lip, I probably wouldn’t have been able to talk. It was that bad. What my parents must have gone through, goodness knows!
From the age of nearly two until I was nine, I had to travel to a London hospital twice a year for a skin graft to my lip and a follow-up to remove the stitches. The journey took two hours on several buses, one way. My dad returned home each time, but mum was allowed to stay with me for the week I had to stay in the hospital. She slept on the chair next to the bed. The skin graft operations I had were fine because I was put to sleep. A month after each operation, I had to return to the hospital to have the stitches removed. This was the worst part, not that I remember at such a young age. My mum said I used to scream like mad. Two nurses used to hold me down while the doctor removed the stitches. I couldn’t talk properly, and there wasn’t any speech therapy in those days either. Only my mum could understand my babbling sounds. Even my dad found it difficult to understand what I was saying.
Unless I talked to my mum, I became a selective mute; I would refuse to talk to anybody because they couldn’t understand what I was saying. Today, such trauma is recognised as leading to academic problems, low self-esteem, social isolation and social anxiety, and I can relate to all of them now. Back then, such conditions were not even mentioned to my family.
My first recollection of travelling to London was when I was six. We still went on the bus. I saw the same doctor until I was nine, and each time, it was the same procedure: another skin graft and four weeks later, stitches out.
I can remember starting primary school at five and running home at lunchtime on my first day. I only lived about 200 yards from the school, with one road to cross. Somebody had made fun of me, and I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to cope with the situation. I bluntly refused to go again. My poor mum tried taking me to school, but I cried when I arrived and refused to enter the school. I missed my first year at school and was six when I eventually started at the school. The staff were kind and understanding, but many pupils were cruel and made fun of my swollen lip because I couldn’t talk.
I had to toughen up. At that age, I was a lively kid and good at most sports, so I decided to become the best at every sport that was on offer, and I did. Success at sports brought friendships and support from my peer group and helped to give me the confidence that I had been lacking. During the rest of my primary schooling, my speech did improve, but I was still too conscious of answering questions and reading aloud in class. However, I learned to enjoy school, and though I wasn’t an academic (I failed my 11 plus), I was the captain of the football and cricket team and the first boy from the school to represent Windsor Schoolboys in the annual match against Slough Schoolboys, a game which we won for the first time in years.
When I was nine, we moved to a newly built three-bedroom semi further away from the castle. While it was being built, we used to walk to the new house every fortnight on a Sunday afternoon to see the progress. Eventually, we saw the indoor bath and toilet. What a thrill that was. Although I attended the same school, I lost the friendship of the other kids who lived on and around my street. For some reason, they attended a different primary school. Every afternoon after school, we would meet up to play football in the winter and cricket in the summer on the streets. There wasn’t one car. There were six of us, and even today, I can remember their names. We had grown up together, and the most important thing to me was I was accepted as the kid who didn’t talk, but not once was I made fun of or called names. They were great times. And no regrets!
Join me in part 2 of ‘My Reflections’ and discover what happened next.
Happy reading
Mansel