It's October 1959; Paddington station is busy... Scanning the departures board for her train a nervous looking woman hurries towards the platform. In one hand she carries a suitcase and holding her other hand tightly is a pretty 2 year old; a mixed race child. The girls's name was Rosemary Walter and the journey she was about to embark on would change her life forever. She could not have known it off course but she was being rejected; hidden. You see Rosie's mother, a white woman married to a white man had had a black lover and Rosie was living proof of a relationship that was not just illicit but in those days deemed utterly shameful...
These are not my words but the word's of George Alagiah narrating the three part series Mixed Britannia. The little girl in the story is my mother; this was the tale of the early years of my mothers life...
My mother was born in 1957 to a white mother and a Jamaican father; in 1959 at the age of two she was handed over to the National Children's Home and transported from London to Wales; she would spend the next 16 years of her life in children's homes across the country.
The world that my mother inhabited in her youth was not like today; there were not as many black people in the country; there was no noteable mixed race population and Wales was more or less a white's only territory. Wherever my mother would go she would not fit in. Her hair was too frizzy, she had big lips and a big nose; there was no way that she could "pass". She was clearly an object of curiosity to the people that she met who had never interacted with a "darkie" before. On holiday's such as Christmas unlike the other children my mother did not have a family that would come and take her back to the family home; she would spend the holiday's with kind Welsh and English families doing a good deed.
My mother spent most of her time in care in Wales; she was sent to London, Brixton at the age of 14 to be with her "own kind" as Brixton had become known as a place where the West Indian community congregated together and it was also where her mother lived who had become an honorary Jamaican. It was the thinking of the children's home that as she was getting to the age of having boyfriends she should be around her own kind for mating purposes.
For my mother Brixton was as much a culture shock as Wales. My mother had a Welsh accent; she was mixed-race and had never met her Jamaican father. Although she had always sympathised with African-American struggles and her obvious "otherness" made her desire to understand that part of her she knew nothing about; she was not a part of the Jamaican community.
My mother faced as much isolation in her early day's in London as she had faced in Wales; she was different; a "red gyal" with a Welsh accent and a lack of understanding of Jamaican culture. She was not accustomed to the ways of the big city and she was alone...
Gradually my mother began to fit in; she learnt the cultural codes; she began to make friends, kind friends that took care of her because they empathised with her life circumstances. Not long after arriving in London my mother ran away from the children's home to stay with a school friend. Her friend had brothers and at the time Rasta was dominant in black youth culture so my mother became aware of it; the young Rasta men were protective of my mother and ensured she was treated with respect and dignity by the more unrespectable men. Eventually my mother would return to the children's home but maintained the relationships that she built whilst away.
I was born when my mother was 17. She was technically still in care. She had met my father at a wedding. He was a handsome "Shaft" looking guy who wore fancy clothes and had a nice car, he was an ambitious person but perhaps not emotionally equipped to have a relationship with someone who had experienced the trauma of detachment from such a young age.
By the time I was 12 my mother was a single parent with 3 children; a care-leaver with no solid family relationships and a limited education; the odds were stacked against her. She seemed destined at the age of 30 to become another statistic but things changed...
My mother's life experiences had filled her wit a burning desire to help people to do something good and to support people like herself. My mother had always been unbelievably sympathetic to the plight of down and outs and saw herself in them. So she set out on a journey to do something positive in the world and to one day tell her story. She enrolled at university; she struggled every year to make the grades; she struggled with depression and poverty whilst dealing with a son involved with youth-crime and detained in police stations across London but she was able to find the strength to make it through and get the grades. I remember her watching the movie "Educating Rita" over and over again. I think she saw herself in the character "Rita" and it inspired her to become something more than the statistic that she might have been.
My mother's years of study are what inspired me to want to read; go to university and to think about politics and civil society and change the world... Today my mother is a team manager in social services and a qualified social worker; she has escaped the trap of so many care-leavers and is able to support other's whose lives are damaged but she never forgets the struggle that she has been through and still has a burning passion to make the world a better place. A passion that she has passed onto me.
The narrative that I began with has been the culmination of my mother's rise from abandoned child to matriarch; the telling of her story on national TV! It is a story of overcoming struggle and adversity in order to become a change maker; a story of identity that I want to continue. In my work I am not pursuing the "dreams of my father" like Obama but the "dreams of my mother"...
Sunday, 4 January 2015
Saturday, 3 January 2015
Nightmares of my father...
Not everyone can be a saint; not everyone can be a winner; no matter how hard they try. Life is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
My father Aston Anthony Thomas was not a saint; he was not one of the few winners in life; he died on Valentines day 2014, penniless, in a sheltered unit surrounded by beer cans. He was an alcoholic and a recovering crack smoker; a 59 year old with a zimmer frame which he had acquired through persistent alcohol abuse that had led to the destruction of the nerves in his feet a problem that is well known among alcoholics.
Death is always an unhappy occasion for family members; but the pain can be further inflicted by the circumstances surrounding the person's death. For me the circumstances have been the hardest to come to terms with; the circumstances that led to an ambitious man of African descent dying with one friend in the whole world; the circumstances that allowed an aspirational man of African descent to go under the radar without even the concern of his estranged family or the community with really only alcohol by his side.
My father came to Britain from Jamaica in 1960 as a 6 year old boy with his mother and father and his elder brother; first settling in Swindon then eventually moving to London. My father had the spirit of a migrant; that Scarface spirit; he wanted to succeed. He did not want to succumb to the 9-5 regime or minimum wage. He believed that he could be something more; he wanted to make something of himself; to be somebody; we can all relate to that right?
My father wanted to be a "big man", an entrepreneur; he never believed in any of the stuff I believed but thought that black men should pursue making money; We would debate every time I saw him and he would say "Me nah know 'ow yuh get inna dis politics business". He was a pork eater - I even found one big piece of pork in his fridge when I was clearing out his stuff; I said to myself, "Selassie I, that mussi why him drop out, him mussi eat one piece a pork and it choke 'im to raatid!"
My father did not get off to a good start; as a youth he spent some time in borstal after participating in an armed robbery with my uncle and a friend; my father was the get away driver... On release my father met my mother and subsequently became a father.
My father did not stick around for very long maybe 3 years or so; he was a chronic womaniser and struggled to settle down. After leaving the family home I saw my father periodically then from the age of 7 I never saw him at all until I was 14.
One day he turned up at my mother's house. I had not seen him for 7 years. He explained to me that he had a new family and was now living in Stockwell on Studley Estate. I was familiar with the estate and was frequently in that area visiting the adventure playground. It seemed strange that for the last 3 years I had played just moments from my - at the time - missing father's house...
I was excited and the first opportunity I got I visited my father and met my siblings, his new wife and her family. They were not the best family to be introduced to and those introductions led me to many escapades that I hope I will write about one day.
My father tried lots of businesses; selling clothing on Northcote Road in the days before he became "posh"; managing music artists; selling food and a cab service. They were not successful businesses but they definitely provided us with some good comedy material. He would try to rope his whole family into his big ideas, he had all of us working for him, he was like the black Del Boy and we were the Rodney's. He never paid us and could find a million excuses to avoid paying for things. My father was a student at William Penn School; no wonder he was such a "teef".
I remember when my father was setting up a food shop in Peckham Market. He piled up food in the front room for months. He would stare at it with pride! Moving things around; bringing the cornflakes to the front; deciding whether to put the beans on top of the corn beef or vice versa; all deep stuff! You would have thought he was going to be the next J. Sainsbury, such was his ambition.
In my later teenage years I remember visiting my father 3-4 times a week on Studley Estate. I would visit with my friends; my father was very liberal so we drank and smoked weed. I remember turning up at my father's house drunk to the point of near paralysis and my father never batted an eyelid. He had an old creaky microphone and a sound system and thought he was a music mogul. He would get us to "toast" lyrics whilst he "cracked up" in stitches at our lyrical content as we boasted about how many girls we had and how big our private parts were! He never tired of it and always responded with rawkus laughter.
When I used to get in fights with older boys that I could not handle I always used to go for him to come and defend me but he never complained or told me off; he just obliged. He was never angry. He would do security for my sound system when we had a gig and never judged.
I had a good relationship with my father, when I saw him. We were born one day apart; he was good to talk too. Whenever I went to visit him I would tell my kids that i'd be an hour and end up spending the whole day "reasoning". During the time there would be no awkward silences; we spoke incessantly on a wide range of topics. My father was not only a parent but a friend...
But things were not idylic; my father's businesses never made him any money; he lived in low income housing with 5 kids and largely survived working as a local cab driver. He was trapped in a cycle that so many men of African descent are trapped in; poverty! From a young man my father struggled with alcohol. He would get further convictions for drinking and driving and crashing his car in his older years. Whenever my father got a moment he wanted to have a drink and it got worse. Throughout his life whenever my father faced tribulation; the break up of a relationship; the collapse of a business he would become deeply depressed and turn to drink.
After my father divorced from his wife and left his family; he sunk into a spiral of despair. He was homeless for 6 years and I never really saw him often. For a short time he stayed with a friend. One day the police knocked on my door to tell me that they were looking for my father as a suspect as the friend had been murdered and had his head cut off whilst my father was staying with him. It was a harrowing tale; I was terrified. My father was cleared but it deepened his depression. When I did see him he would tell me stories of crack houses and crack addicted women. After his mother died my father told me that he had spent all the money that his mother gave him on crack; he was going under...
Once, I had not seen my father for a year or so. I was walking past Brixton Ritzy, in the area where all the crack and alcohol addicts and the homeless, mostly black men congregate. I saw a dark skinned man with a woolly hat standing with a large Cider bottle supported by a crutch; he looked like a tramp; someone who you may walk past; as I moved closer I realised it was my father. It was embarrassing. I knew the jokes that people made about the people that congregated there and I was with a friend; the last thing I wanted him to know was that my father was a drunk, homeless, crack smoker! But who could ever ignore their parent? I saw him and hugged him; he could hardly walk and more shuffled. I could not believe that the ambitious man I knew was now a "shuffling Negro". He was homeless and sleeping on the streets; I told him that I would return to sort him out. In shock I told my mother who is a social worker and she made phone calls so that support workers contacted him on the streets and he was eventually housed in a temporary sheltered unit with recovering crack and alcohol addicts. He was not an old man. He was 50 years old but looked like an 80 year old man.
Whilst at the temporary sheltered unit my father tried to give up alcohol; he was no longer smoking crack but he had a fit which led to a brain tumour that he had an operation to remove. He was found collapsed on the floor fighting for his life.
After some time my father acquired permanent living space at an old peoples home. He was in his early 50's but had a zimmer frame and his body was battered by drugs and alcohol. I would visit him and he would tell me he was drinking 14 cans of cider a day. He would ask me to go to the shop for him to buy these beers; I wanted to refuse but what could I do? My father had given up and decided to commit what Huey Newton termed "reactionary suicide". Whilst at the elderly home my father broke his hips from drunken falls but they could not heal properly as the medication never worked well with alcohol. Sometimes I visited my father at 9am and he would be visibly shaking because he needed to drink and those shakes only stopped when he had consumed a certain amount of alcohol.
However through all this my father maintained that he was the "girl's dem sugar". One of the last times I saw him I asked what he had been doing and he replied "outta road, a check gyal". This was a 59 year old man with a zimmer frame. Most other people would have given up but he was still trying to get it on; chatting up his carers. He told me he had met a lady friend; she had stayed the night; I could not believe it! I just thought this guy is a "G".
It was only fitting that my father passed away on Valentines Day; he always though he was Mr Loverman. I think he would have found it funny... He passed away with Marvin Gaye's CD Lets Get it On in the CD player; surrounded by beer cans with a saucy lighter shaped like a topless woman in his hand; waiting for his kind new friend...
His passing was not a big event; my father's day's as a big shot were long over; his dreams shattered and body battered his funeral was not a community affair. Most people had not seen him in years; they mostly attended for my own sake; they did not see my father's struggles...
My father had dreams but I don't want to write about dreams today. I want to write about nightmares, nightmares of my father...
My father Aston Anthony Thomas was not a saint; he was not one of the few winners in life; he died on Valentines day 2014, penniless, in a sheltered unit surrounded by beer cans. He was an alcoholic and a recovering crack smoker; a 59 year old with a zimmer frame which he had acquired through persistent alcohol abuse that had led to the destruction of the nerves in his feet a problem that is well known among alcoholics.
Death is always an unhappy occasion for family members; but the pain can be further inflicted by the circumstances surrounding the person's death. For me the circumstances have been the hardest to come to terms with; the circumstances that led to an ambitious man of African descent dying with one friend in the whole world; the circumstances that allowed an aspirational man of African descent to go under the radar without even the concern of his estranged family or the community with really only alcohol by his side.
My father came to Britain from Jamaica in 1960 as a 6 year old boy with his mother and father and his elder brother; first settling in Swindon then eventually moving to London. My father had the spirit of a migrant; that Scarface spirit; he wanted to succeed. He did not want to succumb to the 9-5 regime or minimum wage. He believed that he could be something more; he wanted to make something of himself; to be somebody; we can all relate to that right?
My father wanted to be a "big man", an entrepreneur; he never believed in any of the stuff I believed but thought that black men should pursue making money; We would debate every time I saw him and he would say "Me nah know 'ow yuh get inna dis politics business". He was a pork eater - I even found one big piece of pork in his fridge when I was clearing out his stuff; I said to myself, "Selassie I, that mussi why him drop out, him mussi eat one piece a pork and it choke 'im to raatid!"
My father did not get off to a good start; as a youth he spent some time in borstal after participating in an armed robbery with my uncle and a friend; my father was the get away driver... On release my father met my mother and subsequently became a father.
My father did not stick around for very long maybe 3 years or so; he was a chronic womaniser and struggled to settle down. After leaving the family home I saw my father periodically then from the age of 7 I never saw him at all until I was 14.
One day he turned up at my mother's house. I had not seen him for 7 years. He explained to me that he had a new family and was now living in Stockwell on Studley Estate. I was familiar with the estate and was frequently in that area visiting the adventure playground. It seemed strange that for the last 3 years I had played just moments from my - at the time - missing father's house...
I was excited and the first opportunity I got I visited my father and met my siblings, his new wife and her family. They were not the best family to be introduced to and those introductions led me to many escapades that I hope I will write about one day.
My father tried lots of businesses; selling clothing on Northcote Road in the days before he became "posh"; managing music artists; selling food and a cab service. They were not successful businesses but they definitely provided us with some good comedy material. He would try to rope his whole family into his big ideas, he had all of us working for him, he was like the black Del Boy and we were the Rodney's. He never paid us and could find a million excuses to avoid paying for things. My father was a student at William Penn School; no wonder he was such a "teef".
I remember when my father was setting up a food shop in Peckham Market. He piled up food in the front room for months. He would stare at it with pride! Moving things around; bringing the cornflakes to the front; deciding whether to put the beans on top of the corn beef or vice versa; all deep stuff! You would have thought he was going to be the next J. Sainsbury, such was his ambition.
In my later teenage years I remember visiting my father 3-4 times a week on Studley Estate. I would visit with my friends; my father was very liberal so we drank and smoked weed. I remember turning up at my father's house drunk to the point of near paralysis and my father never batted an eyelid. He had an old creaky microphone and a sound system and thought he was a music mogul. He would get us to "toast" lyrics whilst he "cracked up" in stitches at our lyrical content as we boasted about how many girls we had and how big our private parts were! He never tired of it and always responded with rawkus laughter.
When I used to get in fights with older boys that I could not handle I always used to go for him to come and defend me but he never complained or told me off; he just obliged. He was never angry. He would do security for my sound system when we had a gig and never judged.
I had a good relationship with my father, when I saw him. We were born one day apart; he was good to talk too. Whenever I went to visit him I would tell my kids that i'd be an hour and end up spending the whole day "reasoning". During the time there would be no awkward silences; we spoke incessantly on a wide range of topics. My father was not only a parent but a friend...
But things were not idylic; my father's businesses never made him any money; he lived in low income housing with 5 kids and largely survived working as a local cab driver. He was trapped in a cycle that so many men of African descent are trapped in; poverty! From a young man my father struggled with alcohol. He would get further convictions for drinking and driving and crashing his car in his older years. Whenever my father got a moment he wanted to have a drink and it got worse. Throughout his life whenever my father faced tribulation; the break up of a relationship; the collapse of a business he would become deeply depressed and turn to drink.
After my father divorced from his wife and left his family; he sunk into a spiral of despair. He was homeless for 6 years and I never really saw him often. For a short time he stayed with a friend. One day the police knocked on my door to tell me that they were looking for my father as a suspect as the friend had been murdered and had his head cut off whilst my father was staying with him. It was a harrowing tale; I was terrified. My father was cleared but it deepened his depression. When I did see him he would tell me stories of crack houses and crack addicted women. After his mother died my father told me that he had spent all the money that his mother gave him on crack; he was going under...
Once, I had not seen my father for a year or so. I was walking past Brixton Ritzy, in the area where all the crack and alcohol addicts and the homeless, mostly black men congregate. I saw a dark skinned man with a woolly hat standing with a large Cider bottle supported by a crutch; he looked like a tramp; someone who you may walk past; as I moved closer I realised it was my father. It was embarrassing. I knew the jokes that people made about the people that congregated there and I was with a friend; the last thing I wanted him to know was that my father was a drunk, homeless, crack smoker! But who could ever ignore their parent? I saw him and hugged him; he could hardly walk and more shuffled. I could not believe that the ambitious man I knew was now a "shuffling Negro". He was homeless and sleeping on the streets; I told him that I would return to sort him out. In shock I told my mother who is a social worker and she made phone calls so that support workers contacted him on the streets and he was eventually housed in a temporary sheltered unit with recovering crack and alcohol addicts. He was not an old man. He was 50 years old but looked like an 80 year old man.
Whilst at the temporary sheltered unit my father tried to give up alcohol; he was no longer smoking crack but he had a fit which led to a brain tumour that he had an operation to remove. He was found collapsed on the floor fighting for his life.
After some time my father acquired permanent living space at an old peoples home. He was in his early 50's but had a zimmer frame and his body was battered by drugs and alcohol. I would visit him and he would tell me he was drinking 14 cans of cider a day. He would ask me to go to the shop for him to buy these beers; I wanted to refuse but what could I do? My father had given up and decided to commit what Huey Newton termed "reactionary suicide". Whilst at the elderly home my father broke his hips from drunken falls but they could not heal properly as the medication never worked well with alcohol. Sometimes I visited my father at 9am and he would be visibly shaking because he needed to drink and those shakes only stopped when he had consumed a certain amount of alcohol.
However through all this my father maintained that he was the "girl's dem sugar". One of the last times I saw him I asked what he had been doing and he replied "outta road, a check gyal". This was a 59 year old man with a zimmer frame. Most other people would have given up but he was still trying to get it on; chatting up his carers. He told me he had met a lady friend; she had stayed the night; I could not believe it! I just thought this guy is a "G".
It was only fitting that my father passed away on Valentines Day; he always though he was Mr Loverman. I think he would have found it funny... He passed away with Marvin Gaye's CD Lets Get it On in the CD player; surrounded by beer cans with a saucy lighter shaped like a topless woman in his hand; waiting for his kind new friend...
His passing was not a big event; my father's day's as a big shot were long over; his dreams shattered and body battered his funeral was not a community affair. Most people had not seen him in years; they mostly attended for my own sake; they did not see my father's struggles...
My father had dreams but I don't want to write about dreams today. I want to write about nightmares, nightmares of my father...
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