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I'm Surprised I'm Still Alive

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
510 Seiten
Englisch
Grosvenor House Publishingerschienen am18.01.2024
Follow Jimmy on his journey from his birth, through to the birth of his first child at the age of 21. His early life was filled with every kind of deprivation, he was constantly living on the edge of starvation, the threat of death was never far away either from his home life or from his multiple abusers, the authorities knew what was going on but they didn't help, the most they did was observe, the schools also knew the treatment he was getting at home, every day of his young life was lived in fear, his mind, his body, and his very soul were shattered, 3 times he was placed into a children's home, a place that should have offered a bit of safety, but this place was no better, it was just another place of fear and terror and abuse, only this time at the hands of strangers. for little jimmy no matter where he turned, he found no peace or comfort, his abuse and torment went on until he was in his early teens. Jimmy's early life left him confused with what he was meant to be, was he straight or gay, he hid all the traumas from everyone, at times he would drink away the pain, but it never left him. help arrived in the shape of Judy, she loved his pain away, it was a love he had never felt before, a pure unconditional love for both of them, but this was ripped away from them through lies and deceit, it led to them being jobless, penniless, homeless, a mental hospital, and the ultimate ending of their love, none of it their fault, all done out of pure spite. Jimmy was left alone no Judy, no family, no home, no job, no money, no hope and no help, he tried to get his life back together as best he could, but he would endure more obstacles, a house fire that nearly killed him, a 21st birthday spent alone in the cold and rain, a spell in prison. His life only made sense when his first child was born, its when he began to feel normal, but for over 40 years Judy remained in his head and heart, how could he just forget her, he couldn't.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
BuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR24,30
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR7,19

Produkt

KlappentextFollow Jimmy on his journey from his birth, through to the birth of his first child at the age of 21. His early life was filled with every kind of deprivation, he was constantly living on the edge of starvation, the threat of death was never far away either from his home life or from his multiple abusers, the authorities knew what was going on but they didn't help, the most they did was observe, the schools also knew the treatment he was getting at home, every day of his young life was lived in fear, his mind, his body, and his very soul were shattered, 3 times he was placed into a children's home, a place that should have offered a bit of safety, but this place was no better, it was just another place of fear and terror and abuse, only this time at the hands of strangers. for little jimmy no matter where he turned, he found no peace or comfort, his abuse and torment went on until he was in his early teens. Jimmy's early life left him confused with what he was meant to be, was he straight or gay, he hid all the traumas from everyone, at times he would drink away the pain, but it never left him. help arrived in the shape of Judy, she loved his pain away, it was a love he had never felt before, a pure unconditional love for both of them, but this was ripped away from them through lies and deceit, it led to them being jobless, penniless, homeless, a mental hospital, and the ultimate ending of their love, none of it their fault, all done out of pure spite. Jimmy was left alone no Judy, no family, no home, no job, no money, no hope and no help, he tried to get his life back together as best he could, but he would endure more obstacles, a house fire that nearly killed him, a 21st birthday spent alone in the cold and rain, a spell in prison. His life only made sense when his first child was born, its when he began to feel normal, but for over 40 years Judy remained in his head and heart, how could he just forget her, he couldn't.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781803818092
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2024
Erscheinungsdatum18.01.2024
Seiten510 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1464 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.13445179
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe

6
FILTH AND SQUALOR

The general state of the house was awful: wallpaper worn, ripped, hanging off the walls; paintwork dirty, chipped and faded; holes in most of the plaster walls either from kicks or punches that had missed you! The floor coverings were either not there, or so worn that they may as well not have been. The stair carpet was so worn and dirty and dusty that you couldn t tell what colour it was supposed to be anymore.

The soft furnishings were no longer soft - they were dirty with filth and grime - and if you jumped on it you got lost in a cloud of dust. The living room sofa and chair were pulled up as close as he could get them to the fire, so the old man didn t get too cold while he snored his head off in the daytime. As well as the sofa and chair, the living room had a table in front of the window with one chair at either end. This was the old man s table. On the back wall was a sideboard - an old dark wooden one with an oval mirror on the back, ornate moulding around the edges - and a couple of central drawers in the front with a small cupboard on either side. In the alcove to the left of the fireplace was a small cupboard where a TV sometimes sat. In the other alcove were just loads of old newspapers and rubbish. The fireplace itself was falling to pieces, full of broken and missing tiles. A mirror hung on the wall above it. The room was lit by an unshaded single bulb in the centre of the ceiling. The window was covered with an old nicotine-stained net curtain, and a very old, tatty, ripped pair of curtains hung in front, held up with nails and string. (All the curtains were similar to these throughout the house).

The kitchen was a sight to behold. The area was not fit to prepare food for animals, let alone humans. The floor was covered in every kind of dirt, caused by both humans and animals. The sink area was full of dirty clothes waiting to be washed (all by hand, of course). Piles of clothes would litter all over the area. Dirty plates, bowls, pots, pans, dog and cat bowls, cutlery, and baby bottles would all be sat in a sink full of dirty water. I can t remember what was used as washing-up liquid. The water would have been cold, too. The cooker was a gas one to start with then it was replaced with a very old, dangerous electric cooker. Whichever cooker it was, I don t think it was ever cleaned. The thing was thick with grease and dirt; inside the oven was like the black hole of Calcutta! Animal fur would be stuck to surfaces by the grease. The smell was awful. Flies would be everywhere; fleas would be jumping around, biting you. At first, when we moved into the house, we could use the back room to eat our food on our laps, but as the babies kept coming, this room was given to the girls because there was no other space for them.

The toilet was a disgusting place, even for a toilet. The bowl itself was stained with shit that would have been there probably for years. The inner bowl was a mix of green and brown stains. The walls were absolutely disgusting. The brother who was incontinent, when he made it to the toilet, would wipe his shitty fingers on the walls. One of the reasons for this was because we never had toilet paper. If you were lucky you had newspaper, but he just used his fingers. The toilet seat was broken off and lying at the back of the toilet. When you needed to shit, you had to kind of hover over the bowl. The smell was similar to that of an open sewer; you had to try to hold your breath while you used the toilet. My sister said she too would hover to perform both acts. I really am surprised that none of us kids contracted any number of potentially fatal diseases.

The only one who got anything that could have been a fatal disease was Ricky. In his early teens, he spent months in a specialist hospital to treat his tuberculosis. One of the reasons TB spreads is through your living conditions - overcrowding, dirty conditions - both of which we were living in all the time throughout our childhood.

I do remember being able to get a bath, although being the fourth in line the bath water was pretty dirty and cold, and the towel, if there was one, was soaking wet and dirty. We never had our own toothbrush or toothpaste. The same brush was used by all of us, and probably for Mum s false teeth too! The baths stopped when the back boiler burst so no more hot water for a few years. The council never put in an emersion heater or changed the back boiler because tradesmen refused to work in the house. I don t blame them.

The washhouse and coalhouse were crammed from floor to ceiling with rubbish - literally. You couldn t open the coalhouse door without bags of rubbish or old clothes falling onto you, and the smell was indescribable, coming from whatever was rotting away in there. We didn t have toys really, just a few second-hand broken ones. We never had them bought new. For us, they would come from jumble sales, the local tip, or stolen from school or off other kids. The bonfire was a good place to get toys, also the bonfire was a good place to get clothes, we used to find some plastic toys washed up on the beaches too. We used to make our own toys out of cut-out figures from comics or books. My oldest brother was good at making cardboard models of tanks and trucks. Most of our toys would be war related. We would play games together as well, again usually war related. One night, we were playing hide and seek in our bedroom (not a lot of places we could hide in a small space). I hid on the windowsill behind the curtain that was nailed over the window. My brother of course saw where I was and went to grab me and say, Got ya! Unfortunately, as he tried to grab me, I fell backwards into the window, but the latch was broken and I fell backwards out of the first-floor window and landed on my hands and knees onto the soil/grass area by the back door. Luckily for me I missed, by a matter of inches, the concrete path that was just outside the back door. The doctor was fetched and I was just laid on the old man s table. The doctor just pulled my arms and legs up and down a few times and said, Yes, he will be OK. Nothing s broken - a few bumps and bruises - but he will be fine. That was it.

For his pains, my brother got a good hiding, and all because we were playing, like kids do. At night we would try to tell each other stories that we had read in a comic or book. These would be Superman and Batman usually. We enjoyed doing this until the old man shouted up to us: Shut fuckin up and go to sleep, you little bastards.

No big fuss was made over birthdays - no cards, no presents to unwrap, no party to which to invite your friends, no cake with candles to blow out and make a wish (let me be somewhere else, please). If you were lucky you may have got a second-hand book. Birthdays were different depending on when in the year you were born. As I was born in mid-December and close to Christmas I was told for many years that I was born on Christmas day so I didn t need two separate presents, even though I never got any anyway. Christmas was generally not a happy time. We never got proper presents. I can remember we would get a wrapped book with the words Book boy aged 9 (or whatever your age would be) from a charity. I felt like a nobody, anyway. One book I remember getting was Robinson Crusoe. Some neighbours were kind to us at Christmas, giving us a bag of fruit, and a tin of biscuits.

One of the neighbours would also sometimes feed you from her back door so no one could see you being given their scraps. Sometimes we would be so hungry that we had to resort to picking stuff out of bins and eat whatever we could find. I can remember breaking into a workman s hut and finding some ham and cheese sandwiches wrapped up in greaseproof wrapping paper that you used to get your sliced loaf in. The sandwiches were curled up and quite stale, but I was starving that day. I wouldn t say I enjoyed them but it kept the hunger pangs away for a while. At times, thirst would get to you, and I was speaking to one of my brothers recently who reminded me of the times when we were so thirsty that we would drink out of muddy pools. We perfected it after a while so we didn t drink too much mud from the bottom of the pool. We really were virtually just another animal. The only difference between us and the other animals was we were able to speak.

When I was at school I would lie about what I had got for birthdays or Christmas. It was kind of sad, but as a child I didn t want to feel left out. The lie would get caught out when asked to bring a certain thing in to show the other kids, so when other kids were bringing in toys, I would be bringing in a book. It s really sad for me to recall just how piss-poor we kids were when we were growing up, and the cruelty of the other kids towards us, like it was our fault.

The television, or lack of one, was always an issue for us. This was in an era of two, then three, channels so not a great deal of choice for kids anyway, and it would be a black and white set. (Only rich people had colour televisions back then.) These televisions were big, heavy things with small screens. They were made of varnished wood and glass, and you used to get some heat coming off the back of them. We had televisions that were rented - I think by the week - and because the money had been spent on the old man s essentials (cigarettes and booze) these were forever being taken back until the arrears had been paid back and a month s rent in advance was paid. It would depend if the electric bill had been paid as to whether we had been cut off again. We got used to using candles to read by, and sometimes we would have paraffin-fuelled...
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