Benchmark

The year was 1986. I took my lovely new girlfriend Alison to meet my dad, not to his house, he didn't have one.

I took her to a park in Thornhill Square where we walked straight up to a bunch of tramps sitting on the benches. She shied away and said maybe we should go the long way around and avoid that nasty bunch of tramps.

I said don't worry, that's my family, that's my dad, and I could often be found sitting with these people and people like them for the last 10 years, drinking their beer, listening to their shouted, drunken stories, watching them fighting each other drunk. Drinking their alcohol with them, smoking their drugs with them.

Since I was 12 years old these were my people, these were my tribe.

It was an absolutely lovely sunny day walking amongst the flower gardens of this nice little park in North London. An absolute oasis away from the grey dirty buildings on the outside of the park, strolling through there with my new girlfriend, my lovely Alison.

When I said that the bunch of tramps were my family, my people, she laughed. She said oh you're so funny.

She stopped laughing when I walked up to them with her in hand.

I said hello Pete, hello John, hello Dave, Brian, hello…. Dad.

They all looked up and said hi or hello, whatever, in different accents, some properly sober, some half drunk, and some as pissed as a fart.

Dad looked the two of us up and down and said to me alright wanker, who's the bird.

That was him. No warmth. No ceremony. No performance of fatherhood for the benefit of my new girlfriend. Just him. Exactly as he was. Exactly as he had always been.

I knew that inside he would be laughing his head off. Making me look a right twat was one of his favourite past times. But outside his face didn’t crack even a little, no hint of a smile, no way he was going to do the right thing, put his hand out and greet Alison in the way he knew he should have.

Because he knew the best way to make me feel uncomfortable was to make her feel uncomfortable.

Not in a nasty way, for sport.

For a laugh.

I felt two worlds collide in that moment.

Behind me stood Alison. My future, maybe. Possibility. Escape. A different path.

In front of me sat my dad. My past. My origin. The truth I carried whether I liked it or not.

Then gushing doubt.

What the living fuck was I thinking?

Who’s bloody stupid idea was it to bring her here?

All I wanted was to show off my lovely young lady to me dad, nothing abnormal about that, unless your dad is a pissed-up tramp living in a box in a park in London.

I felt ashamed. Not of him but me.

That’s the important part.

I didn’t feel ashamed of him. Or them.

This was my benchmark.

This was normal to me.

These men weren’t ghosts or cautionary tales. They were fixtures. Permanent as lampposts.

Real people with real former lives.

Dads.

Husbands.

Sons.

All born as “normal” as the next man, just ravaged, washed up by time, drugs, mental health, loss of people they could not live without, whatever the reason.

Sometimes, a man just loses too much. Too quickly, and can’t steady their sinking ship quickly enough before they’re crushed by another of life’s icebergs. And so they end up here. Broken. Battered by life.

Predictable in their unpredictability. They had watched me grow up in fragments. Never once did anyone ever question, who the fuck is this little kid? Never once did any say where this little bastard still in his filthy school uniform came from? I was just Colin's kid.

Weekends. Afternoons. Passing moments between their drinking and surviving.

Since I was twelve years old, this had been my version of father and son.

Not kickabouts in the park. Not unless you meant kicking a tramp about in a park for nicking your stash or not repaying the couple of quid you had spare in your pocket before giro day and lent him.

Not lifts to school.

Not quiet advice at the kitchen table.

Just this.

Benches. Beer cans. Hard words. Harder silences.

I realised then, standing there with Alison’s hand in mine, that she was seeing me properly for the first time. Not the version of me that could walk comfortably through her world.

But the man I had become due to this damaged bunch of people who society were not prepared to tolerate, so shooed them away to parks or under bridges away from the “normal” people.

I squeezed her hand gently.

Not to reassure her.

To reassure myself.

This was where I came from.

These were my people.

This was my tribe.

Time had well and truly come for me to choose. Look at them.

Look at her.

The clear choice was that there was no choice.

Time had come to grow up, step a foot into the real world, have a look around with fresh eyes.

Fresh eyes, thinking about that choice now seem unreal even though I was there at the time. I was eighteen years of age, a time when most kids are just stepping off their safe, warm cosy houses and beginning to take a peek at the world.

As for me, I’d spent my time since aged twelve in care homes, at boarding schools, squats and shitholes most kids of 12 could only have nightmares about.

Of course I was going to leave these fuckers behind.

Of course I was going to follow Alison into her world as soon as I possibly could, but for now it was no more than a pipe dream, a gleam in the eye of a natural dreamer.

And whether I stayed or left, whether I became something else or remained exactly as I was, this moment would always be there.

Waiting for me.

Measuring me.

My benchmark.