This is the seventh in my Strange and Sometimes Troubled Memories series.
‘Shooting Teddies’ 30 by 40cm acrylic on canvas board.
Oh dad.
What a daft drunken fuckery your time on this earth was.
You passed it onto me, an inherited addiction running through my veins.
The ocean of alcohol never sunk me though, like it did you.
My life broke into pieces around me and sank into the darkness.
I somehow managed to stay afloat.
Hanging on to a bit of flotsam hope.
A dull spark within in me kept me moving forward, always, despite my vertiginous burden.
I beat it dad. I’m sober now.
I made myself better, hopefully beyond relapse but never recovered.
Always treading water.
I wrote the above because I got tired of starting off my stories with, ‘My dad was an alcoholic,’ and didn’t want to bore the reader. I know it’s a tad melodramatic but you’ll have to forgive me as I’m feeling a bit corny today.
The memories of my childhood home are sparsely furnished by his ghostly presence.
The time I came downstairs bleary eyed in the morning, and saw a fish tank in the corner, it’s glassy dimensions much too small for the dark, puppy-sized, dogfish inside.
‘I bought a shark’ he said proudly.
The poor thing didn’t last long.
Another time, I’d been upset because a kid had taken my prized ‘bolly’ in a game of marbles.
The next day dad came home drunk with a brass ball the size of crown-green bowl as compensation. I hauled it in my bag to school the next day, to show it off.
He had odd quirks.
There was a rope ladder rolled up at his side of the bed, because he was frightened by the thought of being trapped inside a burning building.
When thunder rolled in and lightning flashed across the sky, he would open all the windows and doors because he said if the storm threw down a fireball it would go straight through the house and out the other end. I tried to picture its fiery route through our home, and it seemed in my head like a manic little phantom. Mum was terrified of thunderstorms, she would hide under the kitchen table with her eyes shut tight and her hands over her ears.
He'd let me sip from his beer and take drags of his cigs from as young as I can remember.
He made us stand up and salute when the national anthem came on the radio. He was a drunken idiot.
One time he came home particularly merry and got my younger sister and I out of bed, I can't remember where my mum was, but I imagine she must have been asleep.
My poltergeist sister had white blonde hair down to her arse. He got her to sit in the overgrown garden on a chair from the kitchen and put a towel around her neck. She sat smiling while he gave her a fashionable little pixie cut. He was once a barber but the drink had made his hands shake too much and he’d snipped too many ears.
I remember how crazy my mum went about my sisters crop the next day, she was crying and shouting, ‘What have you done?’
After my sister’s styling session was over, he got us to bring our teddies outside and hung them all on the washing line with wooden pegs. The stuffed creatures looked sad, scared and alone hanging there in the summer night, or was that just me.
He stacked two plastic milk crates on top of each other about ten yards away. Sitting on the grass with a cig hanging out of his mouth and a long leather case across his lap, he unzipped it and slid out a sturdy air rifle.
He took little metal mushroom shaped pellets from a disc shaped plastic container and loaded the gun.
We had to take it in turns to look through the telescopic sight with the end of the barrel stabilised by the crates, and take aim at our beloved furry friends and shoot.
He’d laugh and cheer if we got a direct hit and I’d wince. My memory is very hazy at this point, I think I blocked it out. My sister seemed to enjoy it though, she had the same sinister smirk on her face as she always did when she knew she was doing wrong. I was the over sensitive one, with my over inflated emotions pressing sorely against my insides.
I remember being anxious about the whole affair, I didn’t like it one bit.
I could never sleep at night, my hyperactive body and mind wouldn’t let go of the day.
For weeks after the incident, I’d while away the hours in my bottom bunk, sticking my fingers into the wounds of my stuffed pals, trying to retrieve the little bullets. It was an exacting task as the metal fungi would be embedded and snagged in the wadding guts. I remember being angry with dad about the injuries inflicted on these innocent teddies. My little tiger, that my uncle had brought me back from America, had half its ear shot off.
For some reason this triggered an odd behaviour in me, where I’d pull strands of the white stuffing from inside my soft toys and stick it up my nose until I fell asleep. My mum would be puzzled to find me wide-nostrilled in the morning and she’d spend ages tugging all the cotton wool out of my nose saying ‘how can you even breath, why do you keep doing this?’
He was a pissed prick, he insulted and upset everyone around him.
When I was eighteen and we were at a gathering, he said something degrading to my then girlfriend. I jumped up and said something along the lines of ‘Why don’t you shut the fuck up, you stupid old bastard.’
He postured aggressively in front of me, saying 'How dare you speak to me like that, you little shit, I'm your father?’
I said 'You speak to her again like that and I’ll knock you out, you old twat... fucking father’ and people stepped between us, to calm things down. I was also very drunk at the time, I didn't usually use language like that or behave in such a manner, unlike him, I was mostly a pleasant drunk.
I inherited some of my dad's ways though and have made a fool of myself many times, I don’t have an off-switch when it comes to drink. I’d mask my mental problems by being ‘off my head’ for many years. When I was drunk or high, was the only time I wasn’t fearful. It took me a long time to lay down those crutches.
My ex, (the one he insulted) messaged me a couple of years back and asked me for my address because she wanted to send me something. I couldn’t imagine what it was. A few days later I got a crinkly package and inside was ‘Tiggy' the tiger, as seen in this painting, the one who took a shot to the ear. I hadn't seen him for years, I didn't know she had him. Now he sits near me while I paint. He still has scars. I suppose these paintings are like unsightly scars of mine. Faded ones which don’t even bring up feelings any more. Like memories of memories more than recollections of the events themselves.
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