Preparing to leave and preparing to live.

I’m exhausted, had a final rehearsal today and it went very well, talked about some of the logistics of the band making their way to Blackpool separately and generally started getting excited/worried about the festival, the band excited and me worried as usual. Last time we went up there I only had to worry about making a good impression and we went down a storm. Now I’m worried about not being able to match last year. I don’t know, I’m trying to tell myself just to relax and enjoy it for what it is and another part of me is crucified by the prospect of rejection. It must be something to do with my upbringing.

The band leave before the end of the session which ends at 6pm and I remain for the final hour playing guitar on my own, waiting for my lift.
It's 5.45pm when suddenly the door swings open and there stands someone I presume is rehearsing in our room once our session is up.

He looks at me astonished and says “oh, er, are you sure you’re booked into this room this evening?”
Feeling peaved at being interupted, I say “No, but I am sure I’m booked into this room this afternoon and that has a quarter of an hour to go”
“oh, ok” he says “Sorry” and disappears to leave me to restart the song he interrupted.

I love it when I’m assertive.

1963

In retrospect, it seems my mum suffered psychologically from the caesarean and fell into a post-natal depression. I don’t know how much they knew about it in those days but it wasn’t spotted and then she had trouble bonding with me.
Where was warmth in my life to come from? I was heading for a lot of disappointment.

Being supplanted into a Newtown had consequences that were not apparent right at the beginning. There were quite naturally reservations felt by both of my sisters as they were torn away from their schools and their network of friends. However the thought of moving into a brand new house in a brand new town with lots of parks and fields did fill them with some excitement and it was much the same for my mum and dad.

The problem was, the move was to dislocate them from the very anchors that held the family fabric together.

The thing is, everyone had been pretending to be a real family for quite a long time before I was born. What was missing was a closeness and warmth that typifies a close family unit. It must have been quite soul destroying as there was a very strong desire to fill the vacuum it left with something else.
Both my sisters joined church groups which provided the feeling of family that was missing at home.
Not to have done that would have had a very detrimental effect on them, if you cannot define yourself by using your parents as a model then you have to look elsewhere.