À la recherche du temps perdu

“When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in any way.”
 
In fact, that is complete bollocks. The story of my early life is one of insecurity, fear, loss and dissimulation. It took me a long time to get over the problems I first inherited, then exacerbated. And that led to a certain amount of repression. Indeed, my memories before the age of 16 are limited to a few photograph-inspired events. That’s why, whenever memories jump back into my consciousness, I like to celebrate them and celebrate their arrival. I ask for indulgence on this post, because it will be very much interior monologue/stream of consciousness and is more for me than for any audience.
 
I don’t want to overegg the pudding. Mine is not the story of sexual abuse at the hand of a priest or being dropped off at an orphanage at the age of seven because I wasn’t loved. It’s a banal story – one that has been played out in millions of households over the years. Yet, it is my story, and as I alluded to yesterday, it is the only one I have and, as such, is the most important one in my life.
 
Anyway, when I was perhaps eight or nine or ten, I was fortunate enough to be spending a month in a cottage in North Wales with my grandmother and her friend Doreen Dewhurst, who was known as “Auntie Doss”. As we were playing cards late one evening, Newmarket or whist or something similar, betting each other for pennies or ha’pennies (the winnings from these game constituting the main source of my holiday sweet money) one evening, perhaps as late as 9 o’clock, there was a knock on the door.
 
We were staying in a remote cottage outside a remote village in a remote part of North Wales’s remote Llŷn Peninsula, so the knock on the door came as a shock. The cottage was called Dre Bach, and the village was Llangwnadl. The shock was increased when Aunty Doss answered the door to find a uniformed policeman standing there. She, of course, asked him in.
 
The policeman came into the dimly lit room, with its one light and fire burning in the hearth, even in the middle of summer, and told us that a criminal had escaped from a prison on the peninsula and had been last spotted in the vicinity of Llangwnadl. Had we seen him? No, was the obvious answer, although I remember for some reason feeling guilty in front of the man, a feeling that was increased when he walked towards the card table, bent over and picked up a penny coin from the floor. “Do you have a licence for gambling?” I remember him asking, with a broad smile on his face.
 
My grandmother, who was headmistress of Dove Street junior school in Liverpool, and Auntie Doss, who had as far as I know never taken any shit from anyone ever, were not fazed by the question. I, however, shat myself. (I should point out that this is metaphorical – not true, and not a simile, please see yesterday’s lesson for further clarification.) I was terrified that we would be carted off into the obviously awaiting Black Maria (with no doubt armed snipers outside the cottage, in trees or hidden amongst the sheep in the neighbouring field) for as yet unstated fiscal crimes against the state, and my two elderly female relatives would spend the rest of their lives in prison while I would be sent to borstal and the obviously foster care, even though at that time my parents were both alive.
 
Obviously none of this happened. The policeman recognised he had little chance of overpowering the three of us, and after refusing a glass of ginger wine, beat a hasty retreat. The snipers either dematerialized or never existed, and we never heard anything more of the escaped convict of Llŷn or of what heinous crime he had committed. I have never, ever felt comfortable gambling since that time. In fact, you could look at my gambling record and its subsequent successes (Blochairn Scholar, 33-1; Liverpool to win 2005 Champions League, 500-1) and say it has deprived me of a great deal of income. But given the addictive nature of my character, I think he did me a big favour.
 
This all came to mind today because I had exactly the same feeling of guilt over coming up out of the basement. I am gambling with something much more important than money: I am gambling with my family’s health. And despite spending three weeks in the basement, I am not confident I do not have Covid19. As I lay in bed this afternoon with a headache and pain throughout my body, I had the horrible feeling that I had made a rather egregious mistake and had come up too soon.
 
Fortunately, the headache passed and my temperature remains in the acceptable range, and I now feel fine. But it is clear that the issues revealed in 1974 by PC Jones have not gone away, and I am still a complete basket case in many respects.
 
Today’s blip dates from 1976, and shows the twin terrors that scared off the combined police force of Caernarfon, Pwllheli and all points west. And that penny piece was mine.