Son of My Father: An Extract

I’m in the back seat of a car parked down the road from a pub. This pub was in the city, but some way from home. It was the pub where, according to dad, “this is where your mother meets her fancy man”. It was a cold, dark night and the streets were empty, other than the occasional drunk singing the night away.

In the car, my dad was in the front passenger seat. In the driver’s seat was a man who I didn't know. He must have been one of dad's mates. He was tall and broad. He looked like a man that you would want by your side in the event of trouble. It's possible that he was there for a more sinister reason. Given that dad’s plan was confrontation, this man may well have been there to back him up if things turned nasty with “fancy man.”

I was about nine years old at the time.

It took me years to write this book. Well, it took about ten months, but it was about sixty years in the making. At the time, it seemed like a normal life. On reflection, it wasn’t. That reflection came after a death in the family. The loss of a parent.

In many ways my life was ordinary, no different to most other people. At least, that is what I thought at the time. There were good and bad times, fun times, ups and downs, all the usual things that life throws up. The ordinariness of it all. I was a young boy drifting through life, wondering what it was all about.

Then there were the characters from my life. Tina, the girl who for years was like a sister to me, until one day she was gone. The little old lady next door, who helped me through some difficult times. The Family from Hell, some of which lived up to their name. Memorable teachers and friends from school, and some I would rather forget.

There were plenty of characters in my life, but life at home was difficult. There were problems in my parents' marriage. A marriage that may well have been made in heaven at first, but it very quickly hit the rocks.

Son of my Father is a book about growing up and handling difficult times, but it is more than that. It’s a story about life in the nineteen sixties and seventies. A taste of nostalgia.

It’s a story that ends with a family mystery of a man called Frank.