Married Life
A page in the diary ""
Written by yve 2. Oct 2007 01:51 AM
Dad and Mum have been married for 47 years, in all that time they hardly had a cross word for one another. As a child I can never remember them fighting. They were a united front and us kids knew we could always rely on them. They would discuss everything. Dad always had a sympathic ear to listen to him in his daily dealings of being a policeman and Mum the 'ordeal' of raising all eight of us.
One a Dad's worst memories of being a policeman was when he had to attend a house fire where all the children had died. He had to stay guard all night and the baby was still lying in its cot, the bodies had yet to be taken away. It was dark and eerie. This deeply affected him as we were all young back then. He had nightmares for weeks afterwards.
Another incident was a car accident where a baby had been in its bassinet in the back seat and had been thrown out of the back window. He also had to attend my best friends parent's accident, he was friendly with them too and my friend's mother was killed in this accident and badly mutilated when they ran smack into the back of a truck's flat bed trailer. Dad was always on one-man stations and had to attend everything - car accidents, pub brawls, thefts, suicides and everthing else that went with a towns life. He had to deal with the darker side of life and witnessed a lot of bad things but he never let it affect his relationship with Mum and us kids. Although people feared and respected the policeman side of my Dad, he was always gentle, even handed and hard to rise to anger with us kids. He hardly ever smacked us (not that we didn't need it!!) and would often whistle while he worked in the garden. He loved to laugh and could tell a good joke.
Every summer Dad and Mum would pack us all up and we would take off camping by a beach somewhere. Serious camping no fancy caravan park. We had to take every thing with us water, food, tents, shovel, an axe for firewood, a bucket with holes in the bottom for a shower and Dad would dig a whole in the ground for a toilet. Us kids love it! To me these were the best times in my life - being a kid and not ever having to worry about anything. Dad made all our play equipment, cubbies, seesaws, swings, a sand pit, a giant blackboard, even a motor bike/BMX track with jumps!!
We might not have had the latest brand name clothes or hundreds of toys but we never ever felt like we missed out on anything. In fact I was much better off then any of my friends. I had all my sisters and brothers to kick around with and the unconditional love of my Dad and Mum.
My Dad was also very intelligent, he had a high IQ and loved to read. We could ask him anything and he always had the right answer.
He was a deep thinker, a philospher but logical and systematic.
He also had a cynical and sarcastic sense of humour which rubbed off on his children. He loved to watch Dave Allen, the Two Ronnies, Monty Python, Faulty Towers, Benny Hill, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood films, documentries and the news. He liked to keep up to date with current events and would pour over the newspaper. My parents would talk about politics, world events and everthing else inbetween.
They were soul mates.
When he wasn't working he was at home with his family.