Memories

This is a bit of a retro-active follow up to the post above ...

When i was a kid, or more precisely, when i was an adolescent coming to terms with the death of a parent and living with a military father, i used to spend my time listening to the likes of The Kinks, The Who, The Stones and .. heuuu .. Frank Zappa (!!)

Evidently this unsettled my Father considerably.

He was a guy who was born and raised in a farming community in the 1940's and then spent the rest of his life in the navy.

When he came home from work, he used to say (in his own vernacular) "I don't mind the loud, hippie, flower power music, but the day i smell them funny fags in the 'ouse; sunshine, yer out on yer fakkin' ear"

Soooo

When i was aged at around sixteen i had a bout of !rebellion! : i went out and got an ear pierced !!

Whoohoo big deal.

At that time, though, in the early 80's in engerland, ear piercing (according my father) was for "bleedin' raving pooftahs, nancy boys an' big gahhls blaahhses"

:@)

That was my dad for ya !

Anyhoo ... i spent the following three or four days trying my best to disguise what i'd done: scratching 'that' side of my head when he was around, turning my head arkwardly away when i had to clear the dinner table or just hiding in my bedroom listening to musique (the internets didn't exist way back then)

That kind of stuff...

A bit like in American Beauty where the father asks his son to give him piss samples ...

'Till one day, he arrived unexpectedly, in my room, whilst i had the music on full bore.

Oops.

"I daahn't know how many times i've told you to turn dahhn ..... wha the fuck's tha thing ? ... you got summat to tell me, boy ? "

And that was it !!

I'm sure that until the day he pegged it, he was convinced his only son was a raving girly-man !

He was right about the 'raving' part though.

Maybe i could have told him about Tracy or Lizzie ... but, well, if you live on a 'need to know' basis, then, there are some things he just didn't really 'need' to know;

Y'know ?

;@)