I was born on an Easter Sunday....maybe that’s where my love for chocolate comes from....or maybe that’s just a poor excuse.
My dad wasn’t happy with me as soon as I was born.
I was three days late and therefore he missed the tax deadline that year. So he lost out on a year’s load of tax free money for me.
Good start Dave!
The traditional christian name for the Mason clan is either William or John....or usually both. I’m the first, and it very much seems will be the last, to be named David.
A bit about my family tree, that I am chuffed to say I have manage to trace quite a way back, it’s taken years, but now with the advance of internet technology it’s a lot easier and cheaper to do it yourself too.
It was reading Alex Hayley's book "Roots" that made me want to trace my own family tree.
Now I’m not going to say that I have managed to traced my lineage to Charlemagne or whatever, though I have known a couple of Americans who believe that they have. Interesting how that would be though, considering they never kept any proper records back then. But I have surprisingly found a couple of characters, on my mum’s side I am related to a couple of English composers, who moved from Bath to London and an actress/ singer from the mid 1800’s.
One of her brothers married a Lord’s daughter. So by tracing back that part of the family I can go back to the Norman conquest of 1066....and even further back, in fact, I can honestly say that Lady Godiva (yes, the same lady Godiva that rode horseback around Coventry naked) is my great great (X 33) aunt about four times removed....roughly.
I'll get that re-checked.
Also attached to that part of the family tree are Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare (I admit it sounds difficult to believe but in all honesty it’s true) and one poor fellow was beheaded for being one of the poor souls who was tortured enough to admit to having a fling with Anne Boleyn, just so Henry could go onto the next wife!
Oh yeah, and the same Henry (you know the one!) was Godfather to one of the beheaded person's brothers!
Guilt?!!
All my dad’s side had was one fella who died after he fell while drunk into Southampton harbour and a rather infamous member of the Titanic crew who survived the sinking. Rumour being that he dressed up as a woman to get on one of the few life boats, at least he wasn’t the one who failed to see the iceberg before it was too late I guess.
I think that’s why my mum’s family never got along with my dad’s side. He always said that they seemed to think they were superior to him and his. Mind you although my mum and her siblings were born and bred in the East end of London they were taught to speak properly, rather than with a Cockney accent. Somehow when I came along that seemed to slip coz I’m always dropping my haitches and pronouncing words without the T in it, like Butter etc...I teach any nieces and nephews to do the same too!
Apparently the scene at home when I arrived was a joyous occasion, with both of my sisters singing me a song to welcome me into the family (Embarrassingly enough a popular song of the day. "Congratulations" by Sir Cliff of Richard)....that didn’t last long.
Pretty soon after my mum tried to throw me out of the upstairs bedroom window and my sister watched me drop from the kitchen table to the hard linoleum floor to see what would happen.
Maybe she wanted to see if I really was a bouncing baby boy?
This was the same sister that tried to drown me years later.....
As the years went by, I can honestly say that things seemed to go pretty damn well for me. I can never say that I had a hard childhood, though one of my earliest memories is falling backwards on my bum while having a full nappy, even now I shudder of the coldness of the splattering that went up my back (I was 16 at the time no stop it, be serious Dave).
I had a loving, caring mum and a dad who I think wanted me to become a general or something with the amount of war toys I was brought and military tactics I was taught at an early age. During a simple game of soldiers with the little plastic men you used to get at that time, if I decided that one of my men who was dead (by laying him on the floor instead of standing up of course with a lot of noises from me to add emphasis) suddenly became alright again to fight on (as children do....don’t they? Or was it just me that had a kind of imagination that bordered on some kind of necromancy?), I would have to do that sort of thing on the quiet without my dad finding out. If he found out he would shout at me and tell me that war wasn’t like that and that people died with no favouritism to anyone....I was about six at the time I reckon, if that.
My two elder sisters were ok I guess, one used to take me to town and buy me a treat for being well behaved (in other words, not getting lost while in her company), or she would bring me back something sometimes if she went to town on her own, the other one, who was now the middle child of the three of us, would use the excuse of playing at "Schools" and would then take her frustrations out on me when I didn’t know the square root of 465 or such equivalent (Personally I reckon she was trying to get me to do her homework for her). I was probably about four at the time. Of course this gave her the much needed excuse to shake me like mad to try and get some sense into me, and would then put me into a corner of the room and tell me not to speak for about 2 hours. I found all of this highly amusing at the time, but it must have had some kind of affect on me because when it was time for me to go to proper school I freaked out!!
My mum took me to the school and then went to walk away, confused, I started to follow her. She told me that I had to stay there.
I thought she meant forever!
I wailed my head off, a teacher came out, a kindly, elderly lady, she spoke to my mum to let her know I would be okay in her company and as my mum walked away, the teacher grabbed hold of me and lifted me up and into the class.
I was still deeply upset, but the teacher told me just to watch the Noddy clock and that when the big hand reached the top and the little hand was on the three (she showed me where that was....I wasn’t that advanced!!) that was when my mum would be outside to meet me.
So I watched the clock, it got really boring…I looked at all the other kids and they seemed to be having fun and playing about, one of them came over and asked me to come over and play but I said I couldn’t...coz I had to watch the Noddy clock until the time I was told.
Yeah…I was pretty anal retentive at an early age.
Of course the idea was to get me bored with what i was doing and to go and play with the other kids so that the time would fly by, but I didn’t realise that.
The next day came and I did the same thing. but this time I decided to break away from the Noddy clock and play with some of the things the other kids were playing with...and so my education began.
But I still hated school with a passion, Sunday night was the time I always felt ill....or so I said.
Once "That’s Life" on the TV was over at 9 o'clock in the evening I’d develop a stomach ache. It never worked though and come Monday I’d be dragged off to school.
I hear nowadays that kids love school...well primary school anyway. So was it just me or the way that schools were run in those days?
