My mother read to me, pre school. My reading took off almost immediately after I started school at aged 4 and 3/4, after that I read voraciously and have ever since. My father never read to me, I had to read to him occasionally, to make sure my reading was up to scratch, which it was, if he could have found fault with it he would have done. Although both my parents surrounded us with books and imbued me with a love of reading, firstly from the library, but it was my father in particular who'd buy me beautiful books, I remember my two Alice books, highly illustrated they were absolutely gorgeous, I wish I still had them. My childhood was fractured with him being overly harsh, he told both me and my brother off a lot and was generally irascible and he wasn't adverse to smacking us and quite hard if he felt we needed it. I was definitely scared of him, I had a certain dread of his key in the door not knowing what sort of mood he'd be in conscious that he could go off like a rocket over something really minor He could be quite different at times though, I remember his dark side was also peppered with acts of him being nice, disconcerting because I never knew which version of him I was going to get. I remember being taken to several ballets around Christmas time Coppellia, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, my mother complained he'd always stump up for West End stage productions, cinema tickets, or going up to London to museums such as The Natural History, but getting us school shoes when they were worn out, she told me was like getting blood out of a stone. I also remember him buying me all The Beatles records when they first became a presence, I loved them like everyone else. Whilst I didn't suffer some of the awful abuse others have described, I didn't have an easy relationship with my father, he was quite a harsh critic and I also had too much religion both at home and school both parents being devout Catholics. I realise in retrospect how much confidence I lacked throughout the earlier part of my life, my father would always hone in on the weakest part of my school reports but wouldn't praise the subjects I did well in. All in all I didn't bond with him, as I did with my mother who was the parent I really loved, I often wonder what it would have been like to love my parents equally. He was very annoyed with me when I became a lapsed Catholic, my prerogative I told him, I needed to evaluate all of that for myself. I found him too unpredictable, he wasn't demonstrative either in spite of being half Maltese, he seemed to have inherited his English mother's aloofness and critical nature in retrospect he damaged my confidence, I didn't believe in myself, luckily I've had a husband who has spent half a life time rebuilding it.
I found a photograph album of his in a cupboard after my mother died, which he started around 1940 from his time during the war when he was in N Africa, which of course like many he never talked about and after when he first met my mother. He was very handsome I realise looking back at him early 20s, dark and swarthy a bit like Tyrone Power, but of course that's not how I remember him, he had a multitude of illnesses for the last 20 years of his life and he was a shell of his former self. I do wish we had had more conversations because I know I've definitely inherited quite a few of his traits, like his love of history, he had masses of books on almost every period from the ancient civilisations through to the early 20th century.
