03rd September 2007

I have so few memories of my childhood it’s really sad. There first 8 years of my life were trouble free ones im sure of that. Other than being so sick I only recall a very carefree life. It really was ideal. im not sure my parents were having the same experience. Mum once told me that it was on her wedding night that she realised she had made a mistake, how depressing is that. I think my parents had music in common and later me, but not much else. When I think back to that time I have almost no memory of the three of us together. I remember trips with Mum to Cowes and with her sisters ex husband for some reason. Mum said nothing went on but I think she wanted it to. What a strange story there, she gets married young to Phil and then later divorces and he hangs out with Mum. I recall asking Mum about that and as usual forget the detail. There was also another of these incidences much later when I joined a group with Mum that fell on its arse before our first gig. Oh and guess what, this guy dated her sister I think a bit later. This guy had done a few duets with Mum over the years as they both worked in the same insurance company and they would always have these dicky wankerish conferences. Mum would always be forced up to sing. I hated and still hate that corporate scene, full of people who define themselves by their work and their house. Mum got sucked in to this world and sometimes I would duet with her at a wedding or some such thing. I HATED doing it but I enjoyed rehearsing with Mum. So back to this guy, we were rehearsing quite a bit and as it often happens in the entertainment industry, people can't separate their feeling beyond the most superficial. That is why so many actors hook up after they do a movie together. Same with music and I know from experience. You get caught up in that person's talent, you have the common interests and you confuse respect with love. As I told you previously I was a deep kid and adults were beginning to confide in me. So he wants to talk to me one night and I know why. He says he has feelings for my Mum (have you heard someone say this before, I have feelings. That's the subconscious saying yeah you have feelings but you still haven't worked out which one yet buddy). I said I knew he did. He was a bit surprised by that and so he spoke some more crap and I promptly went off to Mum and told her what he said. Well she was furious and not long after that the band broke up! Oops.

This is our greatest joy and our biggest challenge, relating with other humans. I may not be great with remembering a lot of stuff but I have no problems recollecting how I felt when Mum and Dad came into my room to say they were breaking up. It's probably a testament to the lack of interest in my surroundings that I was in complete shock. I got really angry and ran out of the room crying. Looking back now it's was quite literary of me to run out and leap into their bed, like I was going to fill in the gap that was between my parents. They then made their biggest mistake. They asked me to choose. Can you believe how horrible that was of them? How selfish and weak to put that pressure on me. At that stage Dad was my best mate, we did so much together and he was also going to be staying in the house while Mum left to live with my grandparents. So I said I wanted to stay with Dad. God can you imagine the walk from house to car for my Mother, driving off alone. Alone is not a strong enough description to describe what she would have felt. But things changed a bit later, there were court cases that went on for years and Mum got custody of me. It is during this time that I discovered reading. Living down at my grandparents meant that I was not near any friends. So I would get a book from the library at school and read the whole thing that afternoon and evening. I guess this was a really positive thing to latch on to. It was a way to escape without consciously disassociating myself from the real world. It was the Alice in Wonderland approach of self therapy. I came out of this whole experience quite well I think. All I had was a habit of using food as an emotional drug and that is when my weight became a bigger problem for me. Better a flabby gut than a flabby mind I reckon.

One of my other strong memories of that time living with my grandparents was my strange anger at my Grandmother. She would often pick me up from school and she would always whistle on our trip home. For some reason it drove me mad and I remember blocking my ears surreptitiously and willing her to stop. I recall very little else from that time. You may not realise that at this stage divorce was yet to be so popular and I knew nobody else that had divorced parents. Plus we had not been in our house that long so I did not have that many friends. I spent lots of time at a family friends house. It was very different to my situation as an only child with a screwed up family situation. I'm sure they helped give me some perspective. That is going to be important for me when bringing you up. I want you to see different families and how they operate. The key to life is perspective, to see two vastly different ways of living and seeing things. It is very hard to be selfish and feel sorry for yourself when you have experienced other people's lives. I want you to see poverty and abundance, close families and broken families. Getting through life is about being able to place yourself in the situation others find themselves every day, including animals as well. One of my favourite films is called Powder, there is a scene in which Powder forces a hunter to experience the pain he has just inflicted to a deer. They are connected in a way that he feels all the terror and pain of the dying deer. After this experience he never touches a gun again. That is how us humans will transcend our capacity to be cruel I think.

You are on my mind so much now. I look at your Mum (who I call humpty dumpty now) and just marvel that there is a little soul in there with her. It feels very right, there is no sense of being shocked or confused by all this. It is very natural and I CAN believe its happening. You encompass millions of experiences that I ache for, that even now I keep locked up. Every once in a while I open that bit of my brains up just a crack and peep in. I see a future with you and I feel like I would explode if I were to open myself up to it too much. I am going to give you so much love. As a man it is not a common thing to be so comfortable with expressing emotion and affection. I do not have that problem. And it is a problem believe me. Men of my generation and younger have no excuses any more. It is truly pathetic to come across a man who cannot invest his emotions into his family and friends without exhibiting some form of macho bravado. If it be men you are attracted to, make sure you find one who has experienced life and learnt from it. And someone who can also verbalise their feelings. But do make sure there is a bit of the barsted in him too. Light and dark my dear.

Your Mum will be on leave in two weeks. That is how soon it is now. She tells me that you keep waking her up at night with your wriggling. So does a Ruby wriggle? I think a Molly would. Oh lord help us with your name please. I was just looking at popular names at the moment and Ruby is high up in the UK. Mind you on the forums people are saying choose whatever and don't worry about how popular the name is. I also saw Abby and Emily. Abby is a friend's dog I just remembered but Emily I really like. Your Mother hates it though.