Disraeli Avenue. Caroline Smailes

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СКАЧАТЬ It’d been advertised in the local Guardian free paper and we’d had a laugh about it. My nana was the one who made my mam fill out the form, because she reckoned that my mam needed a man about the house. My mam had been to see Mrs Curtis from Number 20 for a tarot reading, she was holding out for a ginger bloke, on a horse in a field full of pumpkins. My nana told mam that she was holding out for a pile of crap and that she had to make her own future, that no one got anything by sitting on their arse waiting for the world to come to them. So Mam got the form and, although we took the piss out of her, she filled it out and sent it back with a postal order for £15 (meet your ideal man within six months or get another six months free).

      Sam was Mam’s first date. He had no kids and was divorced, because his first wife had shagged his best mate. Sam’s a decent bloke. He’s a teacher at the local college, earns pretty good money and treats my mam like a princess. Nana likes him and I do too. I can’t really fault him as a person, but his dress sense is shit.

      We moved in with him three months after Mam met him. He lives on the new estate, in a canny posh detached house with three proper big bedrooms. Mam was a bit stressed about leaving Disraeli Avenue. It was more to do with her independence than anything else and I think that my dad leaving all those years ago made it difficult for her to let go. My nana helped out and gave her a good talking to and then we moved in with Sam. We’d been here just over five weeks when my dad turned up.

      Legend has it that my dad left us when I was a toddler. I can’t remember much about him. The story goes that he’d been on jury service when he’d met a lass called Sky Thursday. Two weeks after the end of the jury service, after he’d eaten a plate of egg and chips, my dad had packed his bags, taken a pint of milk and pissed off.

      That was the last we heard from him.

      My dad didn’t bother with us and I’m not too sure how that’s supposed to make me feel. He was too busy shagging Sky fucking Thursday, selling crystals from a stall in Coastend indoor market and being a dad to the three kids that he’d had with Sky fucking Thursday. He didn’t give my mam any money for me and he never bothered with my birthdays or with Christmas.

      I used to care.

      Of course I fucking used to care. My dad abandoned me and then went on to be a dad to three other kids. I’d see Karen Johnson with her dad and Jude Williams with hers and I’d feel like shit. I didn’t know what I’d done to make my dad hate me, but he must have. My mam’s been great and my nana made sure that I had as much as she could afford. She’s canny kind. And next week I’m starting university, studying law. How the fuck did that happen? I’m going to Newcastle, so I’ll still live at home with Mam and Sam.

      But Dad turned up.

      I answered the door and of course I didn’t recognise him. He looked a state in a knitted cardigan covered in wolves and a moon. His hair was long, grey, thin, scraggy and he was wearing flip-flops with trackie bottoms. I thought he was collecting for something. Anyway he started talking and it turns out that he’d heard about my mam and Sam and thought that seeing as my mam had come into money, that we’d all be able to be one big happy fucking family. Apparently my three brothers were waiting around the corner to meet me too. I don’t know why him having three more lads pissed me off quite so much, but I seriously needed to deck the bloke.

      It was then that my mam came to the door.

      I was standing with my fist clenched leaning forward, my mam was in front of me pushing me back with her huge arse and she was staying canny cool. She looked my dad up and down, then she did her fake laughing thing that she does when she’s actually scared shitless. She told my dad that we’d managed sixteen years without him and that really he should just fuck off. Then she closed the door in my dad’s face.

      I used to make up a story for the kids in my primary school class. I’d tell them the legend of hundreds and thousands of small green men with orange hair living in the lighthouse in Lymouth Bay. I even told them that I’d met one when I was buying a quarter of Toasted Teacakes from Brian’s newsagents. Jude Williams and Karen Johnson believed me.

      Now for the real legend.

      Legend has it that I once had a dad who went on jury service and pissed off with some woman who he’d known for all of three weeks. He left me and his wife of ten years for a fucking weird tart who changed her name from Wendy Jackson to Sky Thursday and made my dad want to live in a council flat and play the didgeridoo. Legend has it, that my dad ate his egg and chips, then packed his bags, took a pint of milk from the fridge and then pissed off. It took him nearly sixteen years to remember me.

       Number 3

       Mr and Mrs Drake

      Red car matches red front door

      Red car matches red garage door

      EVS 343V

       A tarot reading

       () indicates the length of pause, in seconds

       (.) indicates a pause of less than one second

      ‘What question would you like to ask of the cards?’

      I’m only allowed one question?

       (.)

      My thoughts are all over the place

       (5.0)

      I’m sort of thinking that everyone needs a partner.

       (.)

      For some I guess it’s sexual, for others convenience.

      For some I guess that it’s a chance to be eternally mothered, for others something else. I wish I knew what that something else was.

       (3.2)

      No that’s not my question. That’s not even a question.

       (.)

      Some people don’t enquire. They accept what they’re given. They say ‘thank you very much’ to the first man or woman who happens upon them. They panic, they grab, they accept. They can relax then. They can mate.

       (2.0)

      And I’m kind of sure that most people can go through life feeling content. They accept, they embrace; they make do with whoever it was who happened to stumble onto them, into them, beside them.

       (.)

      I’m beginning to sound cynical.

      Really this isn’t a bad thing.

      I’m just saying.

       (1.2)

      I’ve СКАЧАТЬ