My Dad was a lovely, peaceful man. He survived three World Wars (two hot, one cold) but fought in none. He was deemed too young for the Great War (it started 2½ weeks before he was born and finished when he was only four) and his eyesight was too poor for him to sign up for service in WWII. I don’t think Russian spies considered Whittle-le-Woods worthy of interest, so the Cold War passed him by too. I’d be proud to be able to say that I am very much like him, but I fear that he was a much better person than me. I am recognising more likenesses as I grow older, but perhaps this is simply because I am now the age he was when I remembered him. I don’t really have any memories of him before I was about five, so I only knew him for 24 years when he was aged between 50 and 74. I suspect that Laurence is a yet later incarnation of us both, with him displaying several of my characteristics but also adding many of his own.
Without dabbling too much in cod psychology, I’d love to try and explore what makes me who I am. I find that I am unable pick a side when it comes to the old nature versus nurture debate: I don’t believe that you can separate the two. We all possess a mixture of our parents’ genes, but in different measures which makes us unique. And although we may feel that our siblings received the same upbringing as us, I don’t really believe that this is true, especially for me. My four siblings are older than me and were all brought up as part of a family group, all being born within a 4½ year period.
In contrast, being born 5½ years later, I received more of a one-to-one experience. Pauline, the closest sister to me in age, had already started school by the time I was born which meant that I had my Mum’s sole attention for much of the day up to the age of five. So even if my siblings and I had identical genes, which we clearly don’t, our diverse upbringings would suggest that we would develop very different characteristics in adulthood. In addition, I grew up in the 1960s, and my siblings grew up almost a decade earlier in the 1950s when the world was very different: remember that there was still food rationing in the UK until 1954 and National Service until 1963. In my formative years, I was listening to The Beatles, Cliff Richard and Tom Jones whilst my siblings had Perry Como, Dean Martin and Doris Day.
So if we accept that the environment in which we were raised must have an effect on our characters, it is likely that my siblings have much more in common with each other than with me. They all played together as children, received more or less the same love and discipline from our parents, and experienced the same environment. On the other hand, I had an experience more akin to an only child. I cannot say what effect that had on my character, but I recognise that it has probably caused me to be quite different in many ways from my brothers and sisters despite us originating from the same gene pool.
Whilst you might claim that I would have received the same affection and discipline as my brothers and sisters, I really doubt this. My Mum had more time for me and, being the only one at home for five years, perhaps I responded differently to her. Therefore, I feel it is quite probable that any behavioural corrections that I received may have been more focussed and considered. In contrast, I guess my siblings would have been treated rather differently as a group rather than as individuals. We can probably all remember at school when the whole class was punished for the wrongdoings one or two individuals, and perhaps the same thing happened at home. One child would misbehave, and the other three would also get chastised. In addition, because there were four of them, if they were all equally mischievous, the group may get reprimanded four times as often as would a single child. OK, it mightn’t have been as drastic as that, but you see the point. My brother Tony feels that this analysis is pretty accurate; he certainly recalls being punished for things he hadn’t done. In later years, Mum used to reminisce about how, occasionally she was so driven to despair, that she could have readily “picked one child up by the feet and used it to bash all the others”! I’m sure that wasn’t true, but it made a good story.
I feel that my siblings believe that I was treated far more leniently than they were, which is probably true. Whether they resent me for this, I am unsure, but there are two things to consider. Firstly, I was entirely innocent of any favouritism that I may have received: I was in no position to do anything about it. Secondly, over time, my parents had gained more experience in parenting. As a child, you do not appreciate that you are actually watching your parents grow up too.
I have long been aware that I am self-contained and very content with my own company. I rarely felt lonely or bored growing up. I’m still that way now, perhaps even more so since retiring. I can sometimes go for days without having extended conversations with anyone and yet I don’t miss this and never feel that I am missing out. Some people fear retirement since they perceive that they will miss the company of colleagues. I wondered about this in passing, but it never manifested itself as an actual concern. When I’m out on my bike I have a constant inner dialogue running as I process things that have happened (that is when I’m not mentally calculating my average speed, climb rate, distance to destination, estimated arrival time etc.). I believe that your brain does this at night, filing things away in various compartments for later recollection. I suppose I do the same thing while conscious.
Would I be happy entirely alone? No, probably not. I am aware that if I see a particularly beautiful sunset, hear a moving piece of music or get told a funny anecdote I will want to share it with someone, so I am not that self-sufficient however much I may tell myself otherwise.
Focussing on genes again for a moment, I recognise much of my dad’s character in myself. He spent hours alone in the garden and I suspect that he enjoyed his own inner dialogue at those times. In later life he had solitary jobs (as a school caretaker and graveyard sexton) in which I doubt he would have had much contact with anyone. He was a very calm man who never appeared to let things worry him although I now believe that to be just a façade, and that he simply kept his true emotions hidden.
My first inkling that this might be the case was in 1977 when he was 62. Mum and Dad had a Dutch student stay with us for three months which was arranged via Leyland Paints where Tony and his wife worked. I was never party to how it happened, but I knew that my parents were paid £22 per week (perhaps £180 equivalent in 2024) for his board and lodging for the period and this would have been a useful boost to the family finances.
Bert (the Dutch lodger) had not been with us long when it became clear that he was a typical student who enjoyed the good times, and his character was quite unlike anyone in our very sober family. He quickly bought himself an old Ford Cortina and often came back late at night after being who-knew-where and then proceeded to cook himself something for his supper perhaps after midnight. We were usually all in bed before 11pm, so this was unusual behaviour in our house. More than once, I was woken up with the smell of something being grilled or fried during the early hours.
I don’t think Dad ever said anything, but I know he must have disliked such behaviour, and I know Mum hated it. I suspect that like me, Dad had a strong dislike (fear?) of confrontation and did not want to demand (or even request) that Bert change his ways, despite Mum perhaps wanting him to take action. After a few weeks of this, Dad was taken ill with a coronary thrombosis and spent a week in hospital recovering. Knowing what I now know about stress, I cannot believe that these events are unrelated. The anxiety of hosting a stranger in his house, and possibly feeling inadequate for being unable to confront Bert’s behaviour would certainly have taken its toll. I look at this now from the perspective of being the same age, with a similar character and possibly the same physical problems and I can so easily imagine how I would have felt in those circumstances. This makes me extremely sad that I was unable then to put my arm round my dad and give him the support he needed. But I was only eighteen and it never even occurred to me that he might have needed it.
I accept that I tend to be interested in things that others may think odd. For many years, I tried to hide it, not wanting to be branded as a weirdo, but I suspect that I was unsuccessful. After all, this trait makes me what and who I am, so it is doubtful that it went un-noticed by my friends. One of my unusual behaviours is a habit of recording all manner of things just for my own interest. Once, while I was working in the toolroom, a colleague played a trick on me which highlighted this trait. I used to read a book at each break or lunchtime (unlike my colleagues who’d read The Sun, or The Daily Mail) and I’d leave my book on the table between breaks. Alongside the book, I kept a sheet of paper where I recorded the page number I’d reached each day – I was calculating how many words I read per hour. My colleague was intrigued by this behaviour, but rather than asking me about it, he worked out what I was doing, and then one day rubbed out the last few page numbers that I’d recorded and substituted new ones which were slightly larger. He also moved my bookmark to the corresponding page and then sat back to see what I would do. I quickly spotted something had gone wrong when I couldn’t remember what I’d supposedly read and had to back track several pages until I found the right page. John quickly admitted his subterfuge and had a good laugh about it. I stopped recording page numbers after that.
I regularly create spreadsheets on all manner of subjects, only of interest to me. For many years, I faithfully noted the highest and lowest temperature recorded each day on an outside thermometer, yet I never really made use of this information. Someone may ask ‘is this temperature unusually hot (or cold) for this time of year?’ and I couldn’t give an immediate answer. Instead, I’d have to get out the notebook (or later, the spreadsheet) where I recorded the data and check. I could have easily looked up previously published charts on historical temperatures and gained the answer that way, so I can only conclude that it was the recording of the data that I enjoyed, not necessarily the knowledge itself. (Incidentally, I stopped recording these data when we had some building work done, and the location of the temperature sensor was no longer protected from direct afternoon sun, which falsified readings in summer. As soon as I stopped recording the data, it never concerned me that I never consulted the temperature gauge again.)
I now find that Laurence has spreadsheets for almost everything in his life, from finances to sport. I have little evidence that Dad had similar tendencies, but I believe that in his own way he might have had. One of the many little things he left behind when he died was a scrappy piece of paper upon which he had meticulously copied down the date upon which Easter Sunday fell for many years into the future. I guess he’d seen the information in a newspaper, perhaps, and decided to record it for his own purposes. Once he had this information, he commented how often my birthday occurred over the Easter weekend (so far, it’s been 13 times if you’re interested).
I am not particularly close to my siblings. I really try to be, and every time we get together, I silently vow to keep in closer contact in the future, but it never happens. The question I now face is whether I should feel guilty about this? I do feel guilty, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. My Mum said a few times towards the end of her life that we (her children) should look after each other after she’d gone. It was only after her death that the real guilt started to kick in when I realised that I wasn’t meeting her request by staying close to my brothers and sisters. For many years, I blamed myself for this shortcoming, feeling it was my own character fault. More recently however, I have decided to give myself a break and stop beating myself up about it. Friendship is a two-way street, and once I realised that whilst I don’t often call my brothers or sisters to have a chat, neither do they call me. I then began to wonder whether it was just me that my siblings didn’t reach out to, but I suspect that they don’t talk much amongst themselves either. (Well, it makes me feel better if I believe that!)
When we do get together, I never have the sense that we are failing each other, and I don’t perceive any discord or friction. We always part by saying we should get together more often, but we never do. I have finally decided that this is just the way we are, and that I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Anthony Toner, a Belfast singer, wrote a song that I like called Cousins at Funerals which sort of says what I think.
I can see exactly where Mum was coming from. I’d feel very sad if my children didn’t keep in touch with each other, but this doesn’t seem to be the case, so perhaps, in this instance, my genes have taken a back-seat to Geraldine’s. Let’s hope so. For the record, this lack of contact goes beyond my immediate close family. I have seven first cousins and I can say that I have never been in touch with any of them for at least 30 years, probably more. (Thinking back to the song above, I can’t even remember which of my cousins attended my Mum’s funeral in 2007). I sometimes wonder whether it would be interesting to get in touch with some of my cousins, but where would I start? How do you suddenly say to someone ‘Hi, it’s your cousin Bernard, how’re you doing?’ when I don’t know the first thing about them. They may live locally, or not, but I have genuinely no idea, and I’m unsure how I’d go about finding out. Probably this isn’t going to happen, unless they make the first move, but then if one of them did contact me out of the blue, how would I react? I imagine that I’d be delighted for a short while until I remembered why I didn’t keep in touch with them in the first place. I really don’t know whether we would get on. The only common ground would be our childhood memories which were, sadly, half a century ago.