Jul 08

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Weekend Theme: Rainbow

Posted by on Jul 8, 2013 in Weekend Theme | 3 Comments

After Every Storm Comes a Rainbow

A couple of weeks ago you heard from my mate Lucy and because I know she’s a stickler for explaining it all… I shall take it for granted you know what’s what!

And if you don’t?

Well it ain’t my job to tell you…

what I am going to tell you is this…

I first met Lucy in primary school. We were both loners. Even at 5 years old, Luce was a bit of a geek; and where I come from geeks are there to be made fun of. Strangely after she hit me,  I never made fun of her again. It was like we’d bonded.

My Mum hadn’t come to pick me up, and Lucy saw me waiting at the school gate. She made her mum walk me home, and when Lucy’s mum found out there was no one at home; I went home with them; staying there until Mum cam back from the pub. I’ve gone  to Lucy’s every school day from then until that fateful day on the pier.

When I asked Mum why I didn’t have a Dad, like Lucy did, she said  he’d swept her off her feet. For years after,  I had visions of my dad as a hero off battling dragons and chasing rainbows. As I got older, and witnessed the guys she brought home in place of my dad, I realised  that swept off her feet meant buying her a couple of chardonays. Still by then I’d grown used to the fact that there wasn’t a Dad out there for me…

When we had to talk about someone we admired and wanted to be like, I always used to bunk school.

Well who could I talk about?

Me Mum?

Are you havin’ a laugh?

And I sure wasn’t going to let any of my dads have any limelight.

I suppose I could have talked about Lucy’s Dad, but well he’s a good guy and all that, but he’s as mad as a hatter!

As I got older and we had to do the: “Who I most admire” talk for GCSE  English, I decided to play it safe and pick a historical figure. Well the examiner wasn’t going to go around my house and tell me to my face that I was lying and he wasn’t a hero. And providing I got my history right, no one was going to argue about my reasons.

I picked Churchill.

He seemed like a safe bet. We had a lot in common; both of us called thick at school, both of us with parents who didn’t want to know. Both of us who could so easily act first and think later… Firstly him at Sidney Street when his desire to get involved could have so easily got him killed. Then with that disaster at Gallipoli in 1915 which cost him his political career. Lucy used to say we were both like rainbows – me the reflection of him. Only in our world his rainbow was full circle – rare and breath taking; sometimes in the ascendant; sometimes in decline…

Up until last week, I wouldn’t have said my life had any disasters on that scale. Last week, I ran into the storm that was the SS. Last week I learned what the word “disaster” really meant.

And I can safely say there was no rainbow after that storm.

When I came to, it was to find that my ribs had been busted; my eye had welded shut and my face was bruised to a livid shade of pus-yellow and purple.

Alone, and friendless; miles away from my mate Lucy; I resigned myself to incarceration, further beatings and probable death at the hands of the Gestapo. I mentally kicked myself for trusting a Nazi – just because the last time I had met him he wasn’t one; and  vowed the next Nazi who tried to befriend me – or any mate of mine – was going to die. Painfully.

Enter my rainbow.

Now, I don’t know why (in this version of history) he never became Prime minister.

He won’t tell me.

All he says is: “no one asked” him.

Dunno about you… but that seems a bit lame to me. No doubt I’ll get to the bottom of it, but until then it doesn’t matter… You know why?

Well: he’s done something no other loser’s ever wanted to do…

Without me even havin’ to ask, he announced I was his son.

For other takes on Sidey’s weekend theme: rainbow, click here