Mum, Dad two sisters and a brother. All sounds ideal doesn’t it? I can assure you it was definitely not. Mum stayed at home looking after us kids as best as she could. Dad worked in the family shop in our home town in Lincolnshire. The poor guy worked with his mother all day who was a complete control freak. She was the matriarch of all matriarchs! You only ever did what she said unless you were my sisters as they’d had the time and practice of rubbing her up the wrong way. My eldest sister Christine had quite enough of my Grandma who seemed to take out the death of her beloved husband on the family. It’s not like we forced bowel cancer on the poor guy but everyone suffered because of it.
Christine got a part time job in a local supermarket so she didn’t have to work in the shop. She loved that job and I can vaguely remember being taken in to say hello to her once in a while until she moved out and went to music school in Birmingham to flee my parents and the matriarch. In fact I didn’t realise she was my sister until she moved to Birmingham as I was so young that I can’t recollect her being at home when I was small.
Lesley had to go to the shop after school and help and of course on a Saturday. She loathed it and would hide maggots around the shop deliberately to annoy the matriarch. The shop sold maggots as it sold fishing tackle amongst other uninteresting things! You can tell I wasn’t keen either.
My father was a simple man. The matriarch was to blame for this with her bullying from the moment he breathed and even after she died he was still under her control. I say simple man as that he was. His level of intelligence was low although he knew everything there was ever to know about fishing and bicycles. The shop sold bikes too. His mannerisms revolves around the matriarch in everything he did. He was instructed to go fish on a Sunday as she said he worked 6 days a week and therefore he should have his day of rest away from the family and business. We barely saw much of him as when he was at home he was tired and would sleep across the sofa with his hand down the front of his trousers. This was to the annoyance of my mother who really couldn’t stand the way he would do this. She worked hard too with keeping on top of a large 3 bedroom semi detached house in a nice area, controlling a large garden and her brood of children along with a dog. The dog was her companion in life always by her side when it should have been my father! The dog was a miniature Shetland sheep dog a small Lassie dog that was very loyal to the whole family. She was beautiful and my father hated her for her loyalty to my mother. Jealous, yes of the dog. So jealous that he persued another woman behind my mothers back.
My mother was lonely and unhappy in her marriage to my father and the matriarch. The matriarch ordered visits from us on a Sunday. My mother would take us the late on a Sunday morning with the excuse of having to get back to finish cooking the Sunday dinner! There was a Sunday dinner but it was a great escape effort to avoid staying too long. The matriarch had a dog. A poodle that was so badly beaten called Mitzi. She was black in colour with piercing blue eyes that would glow if you made a move that was out of order along with growling and snarling at you to be clonked on the head by the matriarch being told shut up Mitzi. The poor dog. She didn’t have much of a life. The matriarch lived in a flat above a shop so only ever had steps and balcony to go on. It’s a good job she was a poodle with the black curls on her coat hiding this poor wizened frame. The matriarch would take her every where she went except on holiday. She why’s it in her yellow ford cortina in between her legs as she drove around looking like a very old and over weight Cruella De Ville! When she turn the steering wheel she would huff and puff and Mitzi would shuffle around only to get clonked on the head as usual. No wonder she was a cantankerous dog as it’s all she knew and expected from everyone. The matriarch would go off for two weeks holiday and bring Mitzy to stay with us. As soon as she had left she would turn into a completely different dog. She would go out into the garden and run around in circles for what seemed like hours and was a really pleasant little poodle! We walked her and brushed her aging coat and made her part of the family and then the matriarch would pick her up and go back to what was her normal routine. There was no thanks involved just a postcard from her trip with a see you on Sunday which was enough to make us all shudder!
Our parents were not the loving couple that my mother dreamed of. He was either working, fishing or drinking. When he’d been drinking on a Saturday night then there was no fishing as he’d be in bed all day being sick into a bucket. That noise he would make while hurling into a bucket at the side of his bed used to terrify me. I would be so scared I would avoid going upstairs to the bathroom and would rather wait all day long than go upstairs and risk hearing him throw up! Why did he do that so noisily is beyond me. Just do it quietly please. Why did he throw up you may ask? He always mixed his drinks. Hops and grapes and never learnt. He like his whiskey and his rum and black and he likeda pint or two along with more rum and black and then he would stagger Home and take to his bed. Hardly surprising after working with the matriarch all week.
My mother found it difficult to cope with. Not just the drinking but the other woman and the matriarch and four children and no support from anyone but my eldest sister who was away from family life by choice. She was held back. My mother was quite flirty and loved talking to men friends but always had at least one of us with her so nothing untoward happened. I really wish she’d had the balls to do something but back then it would be so shameful and she would not have let her parents down in that way. Her parents were a strange pair. They married young and had three children. They lived through wars and doted on one another however my grandma wore the trousers in everything they did. When my parents married they rented a house a few doors away from her parents and she would go to my mothers house at 8am every day except Sunday (as my grandad didn’t work on a Sunday) and she would stay all day and talk my mother until she was blue in the face. My mother always said she would never do that to us and she was true to her word as I rarely hear from her and see her probably once a year. When I do see her she asks how long I’m staying as she can’t bear company for too long.
My granddad was quiet man. He was blind from having cataracts and glaucoma and my grandma didn’t believe him at all. They would come over on the bus and see us once a fortnight stop off for breakfast and then walk into town to shop around the local bussling market. They would go to the cemetery to put flowers on her parents grave and wherever they went they knew someone to talk to. My grandma would never tell him when they were cross a road she would just let him stumble down the curb and he would grumble at him saying he was a liar and he could see. She was cruel and would laugh at him. She took advantage of he gentle nature and beat him down with her bullying behaviour that we really didn’t notice at the time. He still did everything that she commanded and you can imagine what Christmas was like with 2 grandmothers in the house that had the same control and air about them was like! My mother and granddad being beaten by every word that came from them and my father trying to be the clown to hide what was happening.
