TASHY DID - A LIFE
Hey kids, grand-kids, and any other nosey people who are reading these pages, this is for you to read now or sometime in the future. It may tell you a little
about how life was 60 or so years ago and rather more about me. Why am I doing it?
In the years after my father's death, way back in 1981, I kept thinking of things I wished I'd talked to him about. After my mother's death, just over
thirteen years later, there was less of a knowledge-vacuum because mother talked more about her past.
Just recently, my daughter and I unearthed my mother's diaries which went back to 1929, when she was just 13 years old. This reminded me of the 1998
incident with my 6 year old and I decided to put down here the story of my life so my children and grandchildren could, if they wished, read about what I had done. I would use my
memory and those diaries to build a picture from 1949 to the present day and add some personal observations.
So, here we go. Each week we will have a new year with preceding weeks being archived. In the first few years, as I will have less to say, probably, I will
add some info about your grandparents and their parents.
1981
A year of changes in which my wife and I separated and got back together and I lost my best, and most understanding, friend. Our lodger, who you may remember was also my work colleague, continued to stay with us and even spent Christmas with us. She and I, of course, spent all day together at work and, I am sure, my wife felt isolated from much of what was happening. My colleague and I knew more about each other’s lives than my wife and I did about ours. The question is, how do you handle something like this. If my wife’s hope was that we would remain together, then she handled it badly. I am not for one minute suggesting it was her fault in any way, I am simply saying that doing the things she did, she didn’t get the result she wanted.
For me, you need to refer to what I was saying in the last update about relationships. There is no doubt that, in this other person, I saw things I was looking for in my “ideal” relationship; things I felt were lacking in my current one. But, unlike my father, I had no desire to lose my children although, I knew, that while all the arguments and discussions were going on, they were suffering. Or at least I thought they were. In the words of someone else, at this stage, “there were three people in this marriage”.
Matters came to a head when this other person was due to go away for a week’s skiing holiday in late February. I don’t fully understand her feelings in this situation nor what she wanted and it would be totally wrong of me to speculate. However, the end result of hours of talking was that she didn’t go on this holiday and she and I moved out. We found a place to live and that is how things stayed for the next 6 months. My wife and I worked out an access rota for the children which meant I saw them 3 out of 4 weekends. Of course the whole thing was a little bit too public for my liking as everyone who worked with us knew about it too.
Returning to my theme last time about relationships, at this stage in my life, I hadn’t spotted that seven out of ten isn’t better than seven out of ten, even if the sevens are different. In other words, I had improved some bits of my life but lost out on others.
Meanwhile my wife insisted that we go to marriage guidance counselling. Before I say any more, I must point that now, today, 2017, my ex-wife as she now is, does counselling. I do not. I can listen but anything I would advise would be based on how I saw things and not how others did. I know it can help to talk but sometimes these people are a bit, what I would call wishy-washy. All lovey, dovey, touchy, feely.
There is a memorable incident that came out of this and I still don’t think anyone else involved understands why I feel, and felt, as I do and did. At one stage, in some in-depth discussion, the counsellor said to me, “so you think you are better than your wife”. I said yes and they were horrified. Why? I like me, I have to live with me so it would be a poor show if I didn’t. They took it to be a derogatory comment about her. It wasn’t. Just because I think I am better than someone doesn’t mean I have a low opinion of them. As a perfectionist I will always be striving to be better. It was really sad that they took it to mean I felt superior in everything. Unfortunately one of my wife’s major faults in my eyes was, and still is, always knowing what I meant without checking first. Like so many people, she views the words you say as though she had said them and then interprets them from that standpoint. Language isn’t really the best way of communicating and certainly not without checking body language, intonation and also looking at the words from the other person’s perspective.
In July my new girlfriend and I took a holiday to the south of France and, although I missed my kids, this was the best time of our relationship. However, all that did, was to show me that, in the real world, things were no better than before and, on top of that, I saw less of my kids. Indeed my girlfriend and I nearly didn’t make the holiday when I told her, the day before we left, that I was going to watch my daughter dance and she said I should be there doing my packing. Seriously, I can pack for a year away in 45 minutes. We sorted it out but set off on holiday in the early morning after a sleepless, discussion-filled, night. During the holiday I rode a horse for the first time and it was one of the white horses of the Camargue where we were, had my portrait sketched by a relation of Manitas de Plata, the guitarist who had found fame by playing at the gypsy festival at Saintes Maries de la Mer where we were staying and watched a bull fight that was actually quite fun as no bull was hurt. Each one had a rosette on their horns and the "matador" had to remove the rosette to win.
On my return from holiday, I had a meeting with my estranged wife and we discussed getting back together. My girlfriend went home to her parents that weekend so she could watch a recording of the royal (three in this marriage) wedding, which we missed by being in France. I never saw it. As an aside I never saw the funeral in 1997 either as I was also in France but then I may have been in a minority of not liking Princess Diana. My girlfriend’s parents apparently had a dilemma. They were, shall we say, class conscious and so I was the ideal man for their daughter; public school, father an OBE, high-ranking job but I was married with children. It was clear when my girlfriend got back that her mother had been working on her and pretty soon after this she upped and left, returning to the family home.
I began looking for a place to live while my wife and I pondered our future, She by then, not unnaturally, had a male friend, who may have had hopes of something more than friendship. Matters were then taken out of our hands as my work made a decision. The loss of my girlfriend meant a restructuring was needed and they decided that they would offer me redundancy. I talked things over with my father and I decided to accept their quite substantial offer. I still believe, and always will, that my girlfriend’s mother had used some influence to get rid of me just in case her daughter wanted to go back there. I never checked if she did; I had no interest by then.
However this meant I would find it difficult to find my own place as I was officially unemployed so, more through circumstance than considered and mutual choice, I moved back into the family home. Knowing what I now know, I don’t believe that once you separate you can ever get back together. To be honest, if something was bad enough that you felt you needed to change before, it will probably still be there. All that may happen is that what you changed to is no longer available so you make the best of it. However, we tried to make things work and, for a while, they were OK.
My redundancy payment was good enough for me to spend months looking for something new. In the end it turned out to be almost 12 months but much happened in between. I became a house-husband and while my wife was out at her playgroup each morning, I did the housework, made dinner and began to have ideas in other directions. Unfortunately events meant these ideas did not take root until the following year. I did take on some voluntary work which would actually lead me to where I have ended up, sort of, today.
Firstly, our next door neighbour was a PE teacher and she opened a gym club on a Tuesday and Thursday evening in the local school. My kids went and she asked me to help out. I did this for almost 3 years, becoming a junior qualified instructor and really enjoying myself. Our babysitter’s father ran the local youth club and he also asked me to help out there a couple of evenings a week and then they also had a pensioners’ luncheon club, which met on a Monday. I would pick a few of these people up in my car, take them down to the centre, help with lunches, play snooker with the men if they needed an extra person and finally I was the bingo called for the last half hour of the session.
All of this had a big effect on me as I began to speak in public, take control of events and people and gain enormously in confidence. I didn’t even go bright red so often.
But all of this was secondary to the one other event that year. My father had a serious stomach upset just after Christmas and he seemed to be taking a long time to get over it. He kept going to the doctor, gave up eating red meat but was definitely a little more lethargic for someone who had always been very active. Despite this, in August, when my wife and I had been re-united, he was down on the beach playing cricket with his grandson and trotting around fielding the ball. Once I was made redundant, I would take my son down to my parents’ house every Tuesday for the day and, while mother played with her grandson, father and I had long chats about my future and his past. I learned a lot I never knew and I wouldn’t have missed these days for the world. By early October time, father’s skin began to turn yellowish and I could see he was worried.
One good thing came out of these talks too. Some time before, a couple of years or so, my father had been over at our house helping to look after the kids and he would stay on that evening to babysit while we went out. Obviously, at this time, I was still working in insurance so I didn't see him till I got home about 6pm. The children and he ate, we were dining out, we supervised bath and bed time, said goodbye and left to drive to the restaurant. As we climbed in the car my wife suddenly said she had felt threatened during the day by my dad who, she said, seemed to stand too close to her. She wanted me to go back into the house there and then and tell him.
I asked if it couldn't wait but she said no, do it now. In light of the reputation some people like to give me of being deceitful, I should have just gone in, told him I forgot something, waited five minutes, left and told my wife that I had spoken with my dad. Sadly, or luckily in my eyes, that reputation is about as false as things can get. People like to paint such a picture because often it will make them look better. He deceived me is far easier to admit than he told me but I did nothing. Anyhow I spoke to father, explaining what my wife said and he looked badly hurt. Despite my mother's blatant dislike of her daughter-in-law, father had always made the effort to me nice; to be fair, maybe it wasn't an effort, he was genuinely a nice person. I finished by asking him to try to stay away a bit when in her company and he agreed but I felt terrible.
Some time later my wife told me how, when she was young, she had been sexually abused by a family member and in a way this would explain her distaste for the physical side of a relationship. It might also explain why she felt threatened by my father. On those Tuesday chats just before he died I brought the matter up and said how bad I felt. His answer has stayed with me over these years. He simply said I should in no way feel bad. When it happened he had been shocked that his behaviour, his attitude, his attempt to help out, had been so badly misconstrued but, when he reflected on it, he realised, as he had throughout his life, that no one could ever judge how he behaved because they weren't him, with his feelings. He told me that if I was happy with what I did, if I could justify my behaviour, if I knew, on examination, that my behaviour was correct, no else's opinion mattered. He had been hurt but not by me.
To return to his illness, more doctor’s visits culminated in him being admitted to hospital for an exploratory operation on November 23rd. I drove him to the hospital, but he walked in on his own. He was thinner, and the wrong colour, but didn’t seem to bad. He had the operation on the Tuesday night, a gym night, and my next door neighbour was incredibly supportive while I waited for mother’s call. It came and it seemed father had survived the op and was recovering. We went to see him a few times over the next week but the information we had been given by the doctors was bad.
They had found cancer everywhere and didn’t think he had long to live. At the weekend we took the children in to see him and he had made an effort to shave and look slightly better. It was my daughter’s birthday a few days later and he was concerned because he couldn’t get out to get her a present. He gave me some money and told me to get something she wanted. I visited him on the Wednesday but he seemed sleepy and so, on Thursday, I didn’t go in. Friday morning, December 4, at 2am I got a call from mother telling me father had died. To this day, I still don’t know if she had been warned by the hospital and not told anyone but I felt so sad that he died alone.
The next few days were taken up with funeral preparations. It was to be on Tuesday 8th. The 7th was my daughter’s birthday and she duly got her last present from her papa; Adam Ant and Toyah Wilcox LP’s that she had so wanted. Only his sister of any close family came down and it snowed. The vicar had been to see my mother and sister to write his little speech and I sat there, in shock, when he said that everyone should offer their sympathy to Mrs Rowland and her daughter on their sad loss. It would appear that no one told him I existed. At first I was very hurt but then, as usual, I took a different attitude, one which I knew he would have advocated. I didn’t care if those that had turned up knew I was part of his life; he and I did and that was all that mattered.
It was hard to cope for the next few weeks as we had Christmas to get through and although I am sure the children were sad and possibly understood they would never see their papa again, their sadness didn’t last as long as mine. However, I knew I could not bring him back and life had to go on but I missed him. My gym-coach neighbour, who had lost her own father the year before, told me that it would probably hit me six months later as that was how she had felt. I wondered about this but I don’t think it ever did. It was no different later. I had lost my best friend and confidante. And I can honestly say that not one day has gone by since then when, even if only for a brief moment, I have not thought of him. He may not have been the best of husbands but he was the finest father anyone could ever have. I was a very lucky boy.
One more story from this year and it happened while I was still at work. The women in my section had taken to going to clairvoyants and I told them that it was all rubbish. They said you can’t say that if you don’t know so off I went to see a woman who claimed that, if you gave her something that belonged to a dead relative, she could tell you all about them. I did, she didn’t. I have never witnessed such a pathetic performance in my life. Of course if you are vague enough for long enough and the listener wants to hear something, they will. It is so easy to influence people and the courses and simulations I later ran on manipulation, negotiation, interview techniques and body language showed me this even more.
However, when I got back and related that I was not impressed, one other woman told me about a palmist who she had seen. He is good she said. I tried again. This time I was actually surprised, if not amazed. I am sure he must now be dead so I will tell you his name was Leonard Ritson and he lived in Castle Hedingham. I had made the appointment with my girlfriend and we both had only given our first names so he couldn’t have done any research on us at all. Thinking of it, what with google, twitter, Facebook and god knows what else, if you gave your name today it would be easy to tell you all about you.
Anyhow, my girlfriend went in first while I chatted to the guy’s partner. When it was my turn he sat me down and told me that some hands were easier to read than others. He spent a few moments looking at mine and then said, this looks good. He told me that my left hand was what had happened in my life and would continue to happen but my right showed the options I might have, my potential. I won’t give you the full account here because I don’t remember it. Could you want a better reason?
However some things shook me, others I essentially heard but ignored. Silly boy. The biggest shock was when he told me that I had a serious illness when I was 12, 13, he wasn’t precise, and had been off school for a while. I tried not to react as he had said I could ask questions at the end. He said my mother was very protective and had wanted to organise, he didn’t say control, my life. Two out of two and I was listening. He didn’t ask me what work I did but said he could see a career in the creative industries, maybe involving travel and young people. I ignored this one. He said I had two children but he could see the possibility of quite a few more. Half right I thought because I knew my new girlfriend didn’t want any, and, even if I went back to my wife, we had decided not to have any more. He talked for nearly an hour or so and finished by telling me that there was so much potential in my hand he was quite exhausted just reading it. He asked if I had any questions and I, emotionally and relationship-wise pretty confused, asked what he could see there. You have high standards he said, you may never find anyone who meets them. My concern, he added, is I do not see you being satisfied with anything less. Sometimes we only find true compatibility, the sort you need, in old age although maybe the person will be younger, was how he finished.
Now, he and I didn’t know this but everything he said eventually happened. You could argue that he influenced me but I seriously doubt it. And thereby hangs an interesting tale. Fast forward 25 years and I am sitting with a Maori lady, my last girlfriend, well last so far, and a little old lady who was fascinated by genealogy, her wakapapa as the Maoris call it, and was entertaining us with her stories. Suddenly she looked at my hand and said that she could see I was a very, very creative person. Then she asked if she could see my palms. It was obvious that she was fascinated by what she could tell from the backs of my hand and my fingers and she wanted to know more Then she proceeded reading from the lines across my palms and telling me my skills and character trends. She shrieked a little when she saw how intuitive I seemed to be. Later that day my girlfriend wrote about this and I quote her comments, verbatim, here.
You know us now quite a bit so you can perhaps decide how close to the truth Fay’s reading was. Richard is very creative, very spiritual and extremely intuitive. He is a great communicator and is a great teacher. He went through a lot and had some troubles. His relationships weren’t good but she guessed a great relationship later in life, hope the later is already happening for him. (It wasn’t – my comment). He has a line of an immigrant and a special bone that symbolises “serving the world”. She told him that if he allowed himself to be freer, if he was not so scared of failing, he could achieve more than anyone she had ever known. “Really”, she said, putting his hand down and patting it. “A great hand” she added and ended by telling him that he worked best alone but in time she could see he would find his perfect partner, his soulmate. I don't know if she knew how close we were.
She then read my girlfriend’s hand and, again, I quote. “No surprise you are not in your country Dear” she said to me. You too have a line of the immigrant. With your creativity and artistic sensuality your country is too harsh for you. She told me I am very creative and have two distinctive professional life paths. “What did you used to do before – she asked nodding her head. “It wasn’t good for you” I admitted working in marketing and doing a lot of stupid trade fair jobs which required me only to look good and nothing else”. “Well you shouldn’t. You should be doing something creative. You have a gift for telling stories, of sharing knowledge. People will listen to you. There is however a conflict I can see. It’s a conflict between your spirituality and the material world. You like good things and beautiful things and that’s why you were doing things that were giving you money but no satisfaction. You still haven’t discovered your artistic side, you should explore more your creativity. And you are perfectly capable of surviving the hardship if you needed to but it frightens you. You need to take care of yourself and your health. He will take care of you – she said pointing at Richard, but you need to want him to and go with his intuition and do things you enjoy. You went through some troubles but I can see a success later”, she finished.”
Later on, you may understand all this more but if you were to ask me if I believe in palmistry, my answer is an emphatic yes, but I accept that, like everything, palmistry is only as good as the palmist and there will be many con-artists about. I was lucky to experience these two people who, 25 years and 13,00 miles apart, virtually gave the same reading.
It was hard to cope for the next few weeks as we had Christmas to get through and although I am sure the children were sad and possibly understood they would never see their papa again, their sadness didn’t last as long as mine. However, I knew I could not bring him back and life had to go on but I missed him. My gym-coach neighbour, who had lost her own father the year before, told me that it would probably hit me six months later as that was how she had felt. I wondered about this but I don’t think it ever did. It was no different later. I had lost my best friend and confidante. And I can honestly say that not one day has gone by since then when, even if only for a brief moment, I have not thought of him. He may not have been the best of husbands but he was the finest father anyone could ever have. I was a very lucky boy.
One more story from this year and it happened while I was still at work. The women in my section had taken to going to clairvoyants and I told them that it was all rubbish. They said you can’t say that if you don’t know so off I went to see a woman who claimed that, if you gave her something that belonged to a dead relative, she could tell you all about them. I did, she didn’t. I have never witnessed such a pathetic performance in my life. Of course if you are vague enough for long enough and the listener wants to hear something, they will. It is so easy to influence people and the courses and simulations I later ran on manipulation, negotiation, interview techniques and body language showed me this even more.
However, when I got back and related that I was not impressed, one other woman told me about a palmist who she had seen. He is good she said. I tried again. This time I was actually surprised, if not amazed. I am sure he must now be dead so I will tell you his name was Leonard Ritson and he lived in Castle Hedingham. I had made the appointment with my girlfriend and we both had only given our first names so he couldn’t have done any research on us at all. Thinking of it, what with google, twitter, Facebook and god knows what else, if you gave your name today it would be easy to tell you all about you.
Anyhow, my girlfriend went in first while I chatted to the guy’s partner. When it was my turn he sat me down and told me that some hands were easier to read than others. He spent a few moments looking at mine and then said, this looks good. He told me that my left hand was what had happened in my life and would continue to happen but my right showed the options I might have, my potential. I won’t give you the full account here because I don’t remember it. Could you want a better reason?
However some things shook me, others I essentially heard but ignored. Silly boy. The biggest shock was when he told me that I had a serious illness when I was 12, 13, he wasn’t precise, and had been off school for a while. I tried not to react as he had said I could ask questions at the end. He said my mother was very protective and had wanted to organise, he didn’t say control, my life. Two out of two and I was listening. He didn’t ask me what work I did but said he could see a career in the creative industries, maybe involving travel and young people. I ignored this one. He said I had two children but he could see the possibility of quite a few more. Half right I thought because I knew my new girlfriend didn’t want any, and, even if I went back to my wife, we had decided not to have any more. He talked for nearly an hour or so and finished by telling me that there was so much potential in my hand he was quite exhausted just reading it. He asked if I had any questions and I, emotionally and relationship-wise pretty confused, asked what he could see there. You have high standards he said, you may never find anyone who meets them. My concern, he added, is I do not see you being satisfied with anything less. Sometimes we only find true compatibility, the sort you need, in old age although maybe the person will be younger, was how he finished.
Now, he and I didn’t know this but everything he said eventually happened. You could argue that he influenced me but I seriously doubt it. And thereby hangs an interesting tale. Fast forward 25 years and I am sitting with a Maori lady, my last girlfriend, well last so far, and a little old lady who was fascinated by genealogy, her wakapapa as the Maoris call it, and was entertaining us with her stories. Suddenly she looked at my hand and said that she could see I was a very, very creative person. Then she asked if she could see my palms. It was obvious that she was fascinated by what she could tell from the backs of my hand and my fingers and she wanted to know more Then she proceeded reading from the lines across my palms and telling me my skills and character trends. She shrieked a little when she saw how intuitive I seemed to be. Later that day my girlfriend wrote about this and I quote her comments, verbatim, here.
You know us now quite a bit so you can perhaps decide how close to the truth Fay’s reading was. Richard is very creative, very spiritual and extremely intuitive. He is a great communicator and is a great teacher. He went through a lot and had some troubles. His relationships weren’t good but she guessed a great relationship later in life, hope the later is already happening for him. (It wasn’t – my comment). He has a line of an immigrant and a special bone that symbolises “serving the world”. She told him that if he allowed himself to be freer, if he was not so scared of failing, he could achieve more than anyone she had ever known. “Really”, she said, putting his hand down and patting it. “A great hand” she added and ended by telling him that he worked best alone but in time she could see he would find his perfect partner, his soulmate. I don't know if she knew how close we were.
She then read my girlfriend’s hand and, again, I quote. “No surprise you are not in your country Dear” she said to me. You too have a line of the immigrant. With your creativity and artistic sensuality your country is too harsh for you. She told me I am very creative and have two distinctive professional life paths. “What did you used to do before – she asked nodding her head. “It wasn’t good for you” I admitted working in marketing and doing a lot of stupid trade fair jobs which required me only to look good and nothing else”. “Well you shouldn’t. You should be doing something creative. You have a gift for telling stories, of sharing knowledge. People will listen to you. There is however a conflict I can see. It’s a conflict between your spirituality and the material world. You like good things and beautiful things and that’s why you were doing things that were giving you money but no satisfaction. You still haven’t discovered your artistic side, you should explore more your creativity. And you are perfectly capable of surviving the hardship if you needed to but it frightens you. You need to take care of yourself and your health. He will take care of you – she said pointing at Richard, but you need to want him to and go with his intuition and do things you enjoy. You went through some troubles but I can see a success later”, she finished.”
Later on, you may understand all this more but if you were to ask me if I believe in palmistry, my answer is an emphatic yes, but I accept that, like everything, palmistry is only as good as the palmist and there will be many con-artists about. I was lucky to experience these two people who, 25 years and 13,00 miles apart, virtually gave the same reading.
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