Despite the fact that I was an up and coming
star in the learning disability world, well; to the people supported and hopefully
most of the staff, I was a star, those in charge, the social workers, felt, I
think, that I was more of a pain in the arse; it was all still secondary to me.
Apart from being the best dad in the
world I was determined to be the most famous Irish novelist of the twenty first
century and still have at least two days a week off. Once I had re-arranged all the procedures in
the house where Jimmy and Andrew lived things settled down. I could put on a nice film for Jimmy and
Andrew was happy to watch as long as there was a steady supply of beer. This allowed me to stay in the dining room
and write, or read, which can be as equally important.
There was still a flow of suggestions, plots
and plans between Jeffrey, my literary agent, and myself. For some reason the celebrity world had really
thinned out and there really was no one of quality about and those that did
fall within my remit were all as gay as a bag of chocolate marbles. I hated gay men, they were always well
dressed, usually with fit bodies, great well paid jobs and they always seemed
to be happy, bastards. My next
prospective client was a fellow called Craig Revel Horwood, an Australian dancer. He came to prominence on one of these daft
celebrity dancing shows with his acerbic wit delivered with his drag queen
persona. It was nothing new to me to
work for gay men or even a drag queen.
Jeffery and myself were still chasing the thief Paul O Grady and his
boyfriend manager Brendan Murphy. The
final contact between us was when I had spoken to Murphy, and I still have every
word of the conversation preserved on tape, when he actually apologised and
agreed that we should move forward with the book deal.
Murphy agreed to allow Jeffrey to set up the best
publishing deal that Jeffrey could find for the two Lily Savage books I had
already written, and that they had read and loved, and we would see what
happened, I agreed not to write the third book until we could see how
successful the first two were. So once
again Jeffery and myself complete our end of the bargain, I have the two novels
typed, edited for the umpteenth time and ready to go, Jeffrey has secured a
publishing contract, a cheque was waiting for me in London all Murphy had to do
was sign a bit of paper. We were used to
waiting around for Murphy and O Grady, Jeffrey still thinks the funniest time
was when he tracked them down on to the Orient Express, I didn’t think it was
funny then. And I didn’t think what
Murphy did next was funny either. Murphy
went and died.
O Grady now had his excuse to go to ground, but
I refused to let him rest and still wrote to theatres, where he was appearing, advising
the venue manager that Paul O Grady was a thief and a liar and he should be
careful while the fellow was on his premises. I wouldn’t tar everyone with the
same brush but Craig Revel Horwood made me cringe a little. I know we are all supposed to live in a more
enlightened era, but after years of being brought up as a Catholic in Ireland
and then years in the British armed forces, it had been beaten in to me that homosexuality
was wrong, even though I could probably claim that my first boyfriend was a
priest, not that I knew what the pervert was up to. To get a bit of background on Craig Horwood I
read his biography. He was very open and
truthful about his life and on the one hand I admired him for having the guts
to do what he did, but on the other hand my upbringing had me throwing buckets
of holy water at him and shouting, in a very Monty Python sort of way “Unclean!! Unclean!!”
He freely admitted that while surviving as a struggling
actor in Australia he operated as a drag queen and prostitute. His big break
came along when a wealthy admirer offered him a free around the world trip in
exchange for one years’ worth of sexual favours as and when required. Craig says that the man wasn’t exactly repulsive
but the deal was too good to refuse.
Despite the fact that occasionally my Catholic education backed up with the
instilled armed forces revulsion towards homosexuality, I would find myself having
mini outbursts of Tourette’s. But I have
to admit I kind of liked working with gay men; I liked the frivolity, the
gayness of it all if you like. Whatever project
I was working on, for a gay person, would always involve music and of course with
Craig being a dancer, and choreographer, it made things that much more
believable.
On top of all the hassle from London and the
gay mafia, not to mention the ridiculousness of my new managementspeak role in
Liverpool, I still made sure I had time for my children. We still went fishing and hiking, dragging my
poor mother in law around every mountain, lake, river and beach in North Welsh
Wales. We always claimed that the
children could do as they wanted, career wise, but of course, as parents, we
were lying, every action and every word we spoke to them would be to guide them
along one route or another. They were
teenagers now, well; the eldest three were and they all attended a school in
the next town. It was called Cross Hall
and it was supposed to be a very good school, well; it was supposed to be ten
times better than the existing schools in Skelmersdale.
You may think my poor regard for social workers
stems from the learning disability and mental health world, but you would be
wrong. My attitude toward them was only
reinforced there; it was at school where I first held them in contempt. At Violent Hell we were all expected to
become doctors or dentists, lawyers or surgeons or barristers or even priests,
real jobs. There would be a secondary
level of acceptable positions like architect, or vet, or pilot. For this we would be expected to attend Trinity
in Dublin. If you were too stupid to get
a real job then you would be considered a failure and would go to Stranmillis
teacher training facility. However if
you were too stupid to become a teacher, you could become a social worker, and that
is where my attitude stems from. Since
then social workers have not let me down in helping me to maintain my estimation
of their abilities, unfortunately teachers haven’t fared too well either.
Like any parent I knew that my children were
quite able, I had put a lot of time and effort in to their upbringing. The one statement from a parents teacher evening
at their primary school was, “We don’t know what you are doing to them, but whatever
it is, keep it up.” What I now found was
that each school had one or two good teachers, the remainder were run of the
mill. At each parents teacher meeting
you would find one teacher who was strong and disciplined who the children
would respect, and this would usually be the best teacher. Gerard the oldest boy did what he was told,
as did Jane, but James was running rings around them. They couldn’t handle him.
Gerard’s plan was to finish Cross Hall then
move on to Sheffield University where he would study electronics, while being sponsored
by the RAF, which he would join as an engineering officer on completion of his
degree. The deputy head at Cross Hall
called me in one day and told me that his own daughter had become the first
girl from Cross Hall to be accepted to Oxford University to study medicine and
that he hoped Jane would be the second. We were impressed, not just with Jane
but with Cross Hall. James was a real
boy, he couldn’t sit still for a moment, he had to be doing something, as long
as it was outdoors. He really was, and
still is, a most beautiful boy, six foot six tall and a smile that could melt
your heart at twenty paces. He’s almost
as good looking as his father too.
James refused to do any homework at Cross Hall,
it was boring, the subjects were boring, the teachers were boring, he was
turning in to a parent’s worst nightmare.
It was bad enough for a parent to think that their child might waste their
natural talents but of course the school now had league tables to contend with,
comparing them against other schools.
They could see that James would be a negative mark against them so one
day I got a call from the head teacher,
He explained that James had problems but there was a solution, a
specialist team was coming to the school to assess the more difficult children,
would I give permission for James to be assessed? Stupid question, the more I could find out
about what made James tick, the better.
It was some time later that the head teacher rang
me to say that the assessment had been carried out, not just on James but on a
number of children at the school. I could
see that this was nothing more than an exercise to manipulate their
statistics. James had been graded as
above average. I told the headmaster
that this was great news, that as James had been officially assessed as being
above average, then I could expect him to achieve above average grades in his upcoming
exams. Seems that once again I didn’t
understand things, but I quickly explained to the head teacher that I did
understand, only too well. I explained
to him that in my opinion most teachers at his school were hopeless and that if
my son didn’t achieve above average grades then he too would have proved himself
to be utterly useless. The telephone went
quiet for a moment or two. The head
teacher informed me that he was just finding my address and asked if this was
still where I was living. I told him it
was. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll have to pop around and we can
sort this out on your front lawn.’ Probably
shows that perhaps not everything you are told as a child is true.
No comments:
Post a Comment