Journal Entries
Paddington Crash - Mortality
Posted Oct 10, 1999
I have been avoiding the news.
Tuesday's train crash outside Paddington (5th October) leaves me feeling hollow. I’ve kept away from TV news, switched channels when the news comes on the radio and have not read any papers. Last night all that changed, I caught the news, only a few moments. Relatives queue to lay wreaths. A hand written sign outside Reading Station reads "Come home Daddy we love you. Claire." I sob. I'm fighting back the tears again now as I write this. I turn the TV off and go to bed. I feel the pain of those wives, that little girl. Friends. Relatives. All of them.
I take the 7.53 from Cheltenham Spa to Bristol Temple Meads. We have been house hunting the length and breadth of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire for 74 days. Proximity to a station so that I have easy train access to London and Bristol is one of our search criteria. With this in mind we have been looking at towns and villages served by Cheltenham Spa, Stroud and Kemble.
There is a notice up in the station today. A request for information on passengers who took the 0603 to London on Tuesday - the train that turned into a crematorium furnace.
Should I try to live and behave as if the train I'm now sitting on could be a death train? I'd spend much more time with the children and Wanda. I'd curb my drinking. Save money for them and for us. For holidays and trips away. I've said it so I'll now do it. Just you watch. Do something every day to make my wife’s life easier. (Raising children is tough work).
These are not New Year's resolutions to be dropped in a week's time. This is a permanent change. I'll begin with small things I can easily do. I said as much last night having turned off the news. That I'd try and give half a day to each of the children over the weekend, my daughter (3) on Saturday mornings, my son (1) Sunday afternoons, for example. My daighter and I used to swim every weekend - we haven't been swimming since June. I loved the couple of hours I had alone with my son in Cheltenham on Wednesday. More please.
Dad was barely present in my childhood; there's no chance of me being as remote as he was.
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Latest reply: Oct 10, 1999
Weeting the Bed - Age 6 or 7
Posted Oct 8, 1999
The lighthouse laughs when it sees us coming.
"You'll never catch cod with a line like that," it burbles.
Nick is sick over the side of the boat as Uncle Charles hauls in 6 grumpy fish with gobs like man-traps.
"Just you behave," I reply, taking the measure of its ice-cream castle colours of white and red.
"I'll have words with you when I get home."
That night as I sleep my tiny legs slip and slid across the seaweedy shore beckoned by the Farnes Island lighthouse. Climbing the steps that wind around the side I find a door.
"Just what I was looking for," I remark. I drop my pants and have a pee.
Moments later.
"I didn't want to, Mummy." I call up to her as she leans over the bed and lifts the sheets.
"I thought I had gone to the toilet."
"That's alright," she says and I quickly pull the damp vest I'm wearing over my head.
The next morning I feel cold. I wet the bed deliberately to make the bed warm. That was the last time I wet my bed.
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Latest reply: Oct 8, 1999
A 6 year old stays in to watch the budgie programme
Posted Oct 8, 1999
Telly doesn't feature much when we go to our seaside cottage in Beadnell, Northumberland, England, the UK, Europe, the World, the Solar System for the weekend. There is more to do clambering on the rocks or running through the sand-dunes. There are butterflies to catch and pin to mum's chrysanthemums and lupin seeds to pop on the doorstep. But they'd been so insistent for a couple of days now on the telly. so passionate, so convincing that there was something coming up worth staying in for. Every time I heard an announcement from the BBC about the special programme on budgies I knew I had to watch. "It's all about budgies," I told Mum. I told Mum's friends too, when they came round for coffee. "There's a programme on about budgies." I added when Granny came in, "all afternoon!" She was just about to sit in a bowl of peaches by the fire, I got those out of the way in time. She's done that before. "It's on at 3 O'clock," I told Dad when he made a lunchtime visit in between golfing and shooting.
Everyone had fixed to do something else that day. It took a lot of moaning to convince Mum that I should stay in. The last thing any of them wanted to do was sit in front of our small portable black and white telly on the windowsill. The excitement gripped both channels they were covering the same story. "It must be budgie day." I hope Grandpa knows, I told Granny to tell him. Grandpa used to keep a yellow one on a stand in his kitchen. He told me. It must have looked just like the one n the box of Trill birdseed he fed it from. (I've seen the box in pet shops when we go to get the guinea-pig food).
No one listens to me. No one is convinced. No one wants to watch the budgie programme with me.
Mum is in the kitchen, Gran is on an all day tidy up around the house, Grandpa is organising the shed, Nick is racing dinky toys in the dirt track with one of the Spore boys, Jane is in Mum and Dads room going through Mum's make-up, Dad is long gun with a gun I saw him polish and the aupair is out in Mum's car up to the village.
The telly goes on and Mum disappears in a cloud of commands. Joanna comes in from the garden with a pile of stones in her knickers.
There's a lot of talking, but no budgets. I try the other channel. More talking about budgies. But no budgies to look at. No children's television either. I sit in waiting for it to get better. It doesn't. I've been fooled.
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Latest reply: Oct 8, 1999
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