Runaway

Jaysus! This blog is now an unauthorised autobiography. I have only runaway from home once. It was a Sunday afternoon and we were having trifle for pudding. It was so nice that we all wanted seconds and my father asked if he could have a bit. For him to have his bit, I had to sacrifice my bit so I ran, I ran away. Over a trifle! What was strange was what I took with me! An old duffle bag and my father's Yashica Super 8 cine-camera. I was hoping to document cinematically as I ran or more likely I had taken his camera hostage. It was perhaps the most valuable thing in the house. He was a keen amateur Hitchcock and no cousin's wedding would be free of his invisible clapperboard. I had his baby in my bag. Something he valued because he'd asserted his right to the trifle that my mother made. Dream Topping and hundreds and thousands. Women in those days ran around like the women in the Del Shannon video above. Busy going nowhere! I must have been 9 or 10 years of age. I ran down the road to the 'Dingle' the green space, the mini forest where we would play. I scrambled up the bank with tears in my eyes and muttering not because of the trifle but ostensibly because once again I had been frustrated by my father. Couldn't do what I wanted, couldn't have what I wanted so I did a runner which I have done metaphorically many times as an adult. In fight or flight terms I would be regarded as a flighter. 'An Aderyn Brith'. I had a privileged but lonely and isolated childhood. My father, the eldest of 12 children had not grown up in poverty but there was not much to go around the children, so he classically worked hard for a living and I was to benefit materially but suffer emotionally. Nature or Nurture? A combination of both led to my diagnosis of Manic Depression in 2005. I couldn't cope as a child and I couldn't cope as an adult and I will freely admit that now. Not easy for a man to do but I am over gender roles now thank you very much! I have left home on countless occasions since that day but have always returned. I literally cannot escape. I trooped back up the hill as I have trooped back many times, unable or perhaps unwilling to make my own way in the world out of spite and a desire not to compromise. "Cut!"