by Chris Birch
I would like to thank,
My Dad and his wife, Karran, for their continued support. Jack, without you my story wouldn’t have been written and Isabelle, who wrote the first article about me.
Prologue
There was an earthquake in my head. A pounding sensation coming from my skull that seemed to shake my whole body.
'Ow,’ I moaned, unaware if anyone was there to hear it.
Suddenly, as if someone had turned up the volume on the world around me, I heard a chorus of birds tweeting.
I must be outside. Am I laying down? I wondered. I could feel my horizontal body twitching against something scratchy, maybe grass. Then it hit me, I’m not on my own, I realised.
It was only a matter of seconds but in a moment that felt like minutes I wondered if I were alive, or, dead. As the hot tingle of pain seared through my skull I tried to collect my disorientated thoughts despite the heavy fog that was settling in my mind.
Where am I? What’s happened to me?
Chapter One: A Traditional Childhood
I got out of the car and looked around. The grey, concrete car park was empty, the only movement in my eye line was from a group of pigeons picking over some litter. I was suddenly glad no one else was there. I anxiously cleared my throat and then made my way over to the bin bags that were piled up against the red bricks of the back of the shop. As I got closer, I looked for clues as to what might be inside. Focusing my eyes, I was hoping to see a torn-up crisp packet peeking out of the top of one of them, but they had all been sealed up tightly. Taking a last deep breath, I stretched one hand out to grasp the bin bag and the other to pull at the side of it, before tearing it apart in the middle. As the plastic finally gave way the bag opened up and, like the stuffing inside a teddy bear, its contents started to spill onto the ground. It took a few seconds for me to realise what was in front of me. I stood staring at the items on the floor, dumbfounded. Sat on the car park tarmac, next to my foot, was a squishy blue book. Swirly writing spelt out the words: ‘Baby Boy’. That’s mine, I realised in total disbelief, that’s my baby book.
It seemed surreal to see something so cherished now strewn on the floor, unwanted. It reminded me of a scene from a film, as if there had been an explosion which had catapulted my things there, outside of my home, where they didn’t belong. As I picked it up, the aged pages fell open on a picture of me as a baby: my own big blue eyes stared back at me from inside a hospital incubator. So she wasn’t bluffing, I thought, as the pressure of the situation started to bear down on my head like I was being squashed into the ground.
A familiar voice rang in my head.
'This is the first photo we took of you,' Mum had explained when I had looked at the book as a child and pointed to the page I was now holding in my hands.
'You were the most beautiful baby,' she had cooed, as I had secretly wondered how she could have found the pile of pale, folded, skin in the picture beautiful.
Standing in the car park, my devastation was temporarily kept at bay as I distracted myself with the book. But as I turned the pages, I found Mum’s handwriting on every treasured caption, marking each milestone: my first tooth, first words.
'You learnt to walk and talk when you were only nine months,' Mum had once told me, when we had turned the pages, remembering my past achievements.
'We were so proud of you,' she had added, giving me a cuddle and making me swell with confidence.
My brain struggled to take it in. How is this possible? How on earth has it come to this?
I had gone through that book hundreds of times with my mum as a child, I would force her to tell me stories of what I was like as a child, I loved to hear all about my escapades. Mum and I would cuddle up on the sofa, drink tea and gobble our way through a pack of biscuits as she recollected things I had done. My favourite stories were about when I had been naughty. As I stood in the lonely car-park, my life around me in bin-bags, I could still hear her voice telling me those familiar tales.
'One day I asked you to tidy your room. Well, I had asked you again and again but you wouldn’t do it. You must have got fed up with me asking you because the next thing I knew, I went in your room and it was empty. But you hadn’t just tidied up, you had taken all your things and piled them up in my room. You came storming up to me and said, “It’s your fault my room is messy, Mum, you bought me all these things!” Well, I couldn’t believe it!’
Mum had always seemed to love my cheeky side, she embraced the fact I always had something to say and would stand up for myself. Well, once upon a time she did.
My mum was a tiny woman, when I was a teenager I towered over her but that was only in size. With myself and my younger brother, Simon, to keep in check Mum definitely made her presence known. She had to be strict with two boys to keep on the straight and narrow and we soon learnt that it wasn’t worth breaking her rules. The first and second time I made the mistake of swearing in front of mum will always stick in my mind. I was eleven and my class at primary school went to the local high school for the day, it was a practise run for when we all graduated later on in the year. It was certainly an education but not because of the big classrooms and hundreds of children bustling around. The main thing that I picked up from the day was a few choice words I overheard the older children shouting at us. A few days later, in the back of the car on the way to my birthday party at a local hall, the perfect moment to show off my new vocabulary presented itself. As the radio blared and Mum and my Aunty chattered away in the front of the car, Simon seized the opportunity to wallop me in the leg. He may have been a younger brother but he knew how to land a punch that stung. Consumed with anger, I tried to think of the ultimate revenge and then I remembered the new words I had learnt.
'Fuck off,' I snarled, knowing as I uttered the phrase that it was both very, very, naughty and very, very, shocking.
My brother’s eyes widened in disbelief. I felt victorious and extremely grown-up; well, I did until I realised Mum and Nan were no longer talking. Nervously turning my head away from Simon, towards the front of the car, I held my breath, praying Mum hadn’t heard me. My eyes met hers and Mum’s piercing stare bore back at me. She raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips and jutted out her jaw. I knew then I was in serious trouble.
'Turn this car around, we’re going home,' she instructed Nan. 'There will be no party for you, Christopher.'
True to her word, I was sent to bed and spent the evening listening to Mum ring around my friends, telling them I had been naughty and so the party was cancelled. Simon was gleefully watching the whole episode from the stairs.
'He’s been a silly boy,' she kept muttering, a final embarrassing blow to my already dented pride.
When I attempted my second try at swearing at my brother, she overheard me and summoned me into the bathroom. I had no idea what was waiting for me.
'Open your mouth, Chris,' she said simply, holding one hand behind her back.
Feeling very puzzled, I did as I was told. Mum then calmly popped a bar of soap into my mouth. I gagged at the soapy taste. I’ll never forget it.
'Wash your mouth out, Chris,' she laughed.
'I don’t want to hear you swearing again'.
Swearing was a definite no. As was making mess. Mum hated mess. One year, when I was about six, I got a Ghostbuster tower for my birthday. It was brilliant: it had all the characters with it and had a button that would release slime. I can remember pulling the wrapping paper off as fast as I could and quickly unpacking it on the sitting room floor. As soon as Mum saw the bright green goo travelling down the plastic toy she whipped it out of my hand, and when I got the tower back th
e slime had gone. I didn’t dare ask her where it was.
I looked at the dozens of bin bags piled up around me and wondered if perhaps Mum had just wanted a clear out. Maybe all this is just an excuse to make my old room a bit tidier, I told myself. But with the bitter words Mum had said to me, ‘you aren’t welcome at home anymore,’ ringing in my ears, I knew I was just kidding myself.
I looked out of the depressing grey of the car park, into the sky, I could just make out the mountains in the distance. Their usual lush green colour was hidden under the dusky blue sky and they had turned black like a silhouette. It didn’t feel like so long ago that I would ride on the mountains with my dad, on our motorbikes.
Dad bought me my very own junior motorbike when I was just eight. At the weekend, if Dad had the day off, we would traipse up the side of the nearby mountain, determined to ride our bikes, even if we were showered by the grey rainclouds that took Bargoed hostage in the winter. Surrounded by ferns and trees I learnt to ride the motorbike, determined to make my dad proud.
'Keep your hands steady, son.' Dad would guide me and then squeeze my shoulders in support, like a coach would do to his boxing protégé. I would take a deep breath before pulling back on the grip of the handlebars – and then, as I felt the tiny engine rattle underneath me, the bike would let out a vroooom. It felt like the pine trees around me whizzed into the distance. In reality, because I was so young, my bike only did nine miles an hour; I was limping along with all the force of a light summer’s breeze, but to my mind I was flying.
I would spend hours practising, sweat beads falling from my little nose, to be sure that I could ride the bike properly and impress my dad. Once I had got the hang of it we would ride up and down the hilly parts of the mountain. I would speed up before I hit a hill and get a huge rush of adrenalin as I felt the bike travel – what was probably only ten centimetres, but what felt like ten feet – off the ground. Then, after completing my lap of the dirt track, I would return to Dad, who dutifully waited for me with a proud smile. In my mind, I looked like the stars of the motocross that Dad would take us to watch; in reality, I was a little boy following in his dad’s footsteps.
'Well done,' Dad would congratulate me, with a firm pat on the back (which was always a little too hard, but receiving it felt like part of a rite of passage to becoming a man). One day I rode ahead of Dad as he fixed something that was wrong with his bike. I had ridden off confidently but when I stopped and looked back I couldn’t see Dad. I was surrounded by ferns and because I was short, I couldn’t see above them to work out where he was. I shouted for him but my voice was muffled by my helmet and I was so panicked that when I tried to get it off it stuck still. It was the first time I had felt lost.
So much time had past, so much had happened but really, stood alone, rejected by my family, I was still that scared, lost, little boy wondering where he belonged.
I was born in Caerphilly – but Bargoed, the town where I grew up, is part of the South Wales valleys. It lies on the Rhymney river and was your typical working-class town: men worked, women looked after the children, and very little ever happened that was out of the ordinary. The same could be said for my childhood, it was normal and happy, my Mum, Dad, brother Simon and me were once the stereotypical, average, family.
Like most Welsh people, I had grown up with the knowledge that there was a woman called Margaret Thatcher and she had done an awful thing to us. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood who she was, and that the so-called 'Iron Lady' had been Prime Minister. As a child, I had no understanding that her unforgivable crime was to close down the mines in not only our area but across the rest of Wales and the UK. Her name was uttered with the same contempt as that of a murderer, a thief; she was someone whose evil was so present that it was like she lived on our street, rather than being a former Prime Minister.
When I was born, in 1984, ‘Maggie’ had already closed the mines and thereby thrust most of the community into poverty and unemployment. A previously thriving town full of working-class people, eager to spend their weekly pay packets at the local pub, chippy or in the parade of shops in the centre of town, disappeared.
There was no work and there was no money and so the community suffered and the high street that had once illuminated the town became derelict and run-down. It was the same story across most of Wales – but the hardship people had faced didn’t destroy their community spirit.
Everyone knew everyone in Bargoed. We used to say that it was the type of town where you could leave your front door open; the only danger in doing so was that someone might pop their head in for a quick chat. If you walked down the street and passed someone, you spoke to them, because the chances were they knew you or your family.
Cosmopolitan Cardiff was only seventeen miles away but I rarely visited it. As for most people in the local area, Bargoed had everything I needed. When I was a child, my nan would sometimes take me into the city on the train and the tall buildings would swamp me, the chorus of noise ringing in my ears long after I had got back home. In those days the city seemed so busy and imposing.
Growing up, Mum and I were inseparable and even as an adult I would have counted her as my best friend - she had always been a voice of reason, a comforter and my biggest fan. As a child, she did everything she possibly could to make me feel special. Mum was incredible at drawing and when I was little we would spend whole afternoons with her teaching me how to draw cartoon characters. When she painstakingly decorated Simon’s bedroom with Disney characters I helped her draw and colour in Pluto and Mickey’s faces.
She planned exciting holidays for the family; and whenever I was poorly, or needed a bit of comfort, she would make one of her specialities, like corned beef pie with thick layers of crusty pastry.
Mum’s unconditional love lead to me growing into a very confident child. I had spent my whole life listening to my mother tell me how smart and brave I was, so, from a very young age there was little I thought I couldn’t do. Of course, if I ever fell flat on my face, literally or figuratively, mum was there to nurse my broken bones or dented pride. Dad was great too, its just that he was always at work so Simon and I spent most our time with my mum and nan.
I lifted a bin bag and carried it to the boot of my car. I wanted to leave the car-park, I was worried someone might see me, then I would have to explain why my mum had dumped all my stuff here in bin bags. I wanted to hide, I could fear tears rising. I lifted another bag but it was slightly open, a picture poked out the top. Me, as a child, with a big cheesy grin under the arm of my dad. I hadn’t spoken to him since everything had happened, I wondered if Mum had told him, if he was going to cut me out of his life too.
I recognised the picture straight away, it was from the first time I went to work with my dad. I was only ten but because my dad worked at weekends with his blind-fitting business I would sometimes go along with him. Mum would wave us off proudly and as the car drove off I prepared myself for a day of hard graft.
Arriving at the house he was working at that day, Dad would start by introducing me to the customers before ruffling my hair and giving me a grin. I would help Dad unpack his tools and then, whilst chomping through the pack of chocolate biscuits the lady who lived there would give me, I watched Dad closely, noting the care he took over every screw he fitted.
'It’s good to learn a trade,' Dad used to say, 'then people need you.’ He always used to wink when he was giving you a bit of advice and then stroke the hairs of his auburn moustache. It used to make me giggle that he had brown hair on his head and ginger hair on his face, like the muddled coat of a tabby cat. As Dad worked away I would usually be curled up on a sofa reading a football magazine, every now and then whining to Dad that I was bored.
At the end of the day, after parking the car in our drive at home, Dad would reach into his pocket, pull out his brown leather wallet and slide out a twenty-pound note.
'Couldn’t have done it without you, son,' he would smile, placing his big hand on my
little shoulder.
I can remember that feeling of pride now. That grin that spread across my face and wouldn’t weaken no matter how much I tried to straighten it. Helping Dad at work had made me feel like a real grown-up; I was convinced he couldn’t get his job done without me. Leaving the car, Dad would put his arm around me as we walked into the house. He was my hero, working hard to provide for his family. It was my first glimpse of what would be expected of me when I became a man.
I was like Dad’s mini me, anywhere he went I did too. We would visit the local bike racing, I would chomp on burgers and cover my face in ketchup whilst excitedly watching the cars getting smashed and folded in two. We would cheer on our local rugby team, Bargoed RFC, from the sidelines at the park; beforehand, Mum would tie my scarf around my neck in a tight knot to keep the bitter winter winds from giving me a chill.
I cherished the time I got to spend with my Dad, especially our family holidays. As a child we travelled to Spain, the Canary Islands and even got to go to Florida and visit Disney World. I was the envy of all my friends. Mum loved our holidays; she would spend the whole year looking forward to them. I did too, but for a different reason.
Dad was so busy working that our holidays were the only long period of time I got to spend with him. It wasn’t Dad’s fault, he worked hard so that our family could enjoy expensive breaks away. But I do remember cherishing having a whole two weeks with him, following him around like a shadow, feeling proud when he carried me on his shoulders around the theme parks.
Our holidays were magical. The early-morning flights, leaving the house in early dawn, the sights of Bargoed mysterious and magical under the blanket of dusky blue sky. My adrenalin would build when we found our seats on the plane and I would spend the flight reading books or playing games with Simon. Then, finally, touchdown, and after queuing to leave the plane we would be hit by blinding sunlight and the balmy breeze, filled with warmth, like a hug that greeted you. But the best thing of all was how everything abroad was different. The currency, the food, the language, the scenery. I would imagine, as a child, what my life would be like if I lived in the countries we visited, as though there was a parallel universe where there were different versions of myself. Little did I know that a larger adventure was waiting for me – but it wouldn’t happen when I stepped on a plane; it would hit me when I visited my local park in sleepy old Bargoed.