6th October - When I truly felt loved...

As regular readers of this diary will know, my relationship with my Father was... Strained, to say the least, throughout my life. He was an alcoholic, a cheat, a bigamist, and an abuser, both mentally and physically. The former to both myself and my Mother through his unreliability and gaslighting... The latter, only to my Mother. He never laid a hand on me in terms of violence, though certainly she made up for that throughout the years with regular beatings. Despite all that, I have a glimmering memory of my Father which sticks in my mind, and has come to the forefront of my cortex after I passed a street sign today. 

The sign, several miles from where I originally grew up, was advertising the longest street funfair in Europe, which also - ironically - took place in my home town, and would stretch down the length of the centre during the first Monday and Tuesday of October every year. As I grew older, my Father started to issue me with a choice, to attend the fair itself and spunk away his finances on the candy floss, the dodgems, the toffee apples, and the hook-the-duck stalls, or to keep the equivalent in cash, and buy myself a treat with it. From the age of 8 onwards, when I instead to chose to buy myself the 'World Cup 98' game on my Nintendo 64, I realised the cash was a better option, especially for a child like myself who had to wait 6 months between my June birthday, and Christmas in December, to receive any gifts throughout a year.

As I grew older, and plumper, I'd pocket the cash and buy myself a takeaway after school as we didn't have a cooker at home (that's a story for another day), so the chance to have a hot dinner whilst in my teen years filled me with joy. But at the age of 7, which turned out to be my final year at the fair with my Father, we found a 'claw' machine, like the ones in Toy Story with the little green aliens in. Though instead, this machine was filled with soft white polar bear cuddly toys. One bigger, adult, bear, connected to his smaller 'son' bear, by a plastic Coca-Cola bottle which imitated the advert on TV at the time, where these two bears would skid along the snow and crack open an ice cold glass bottle of Coca-Cola together, forming a 'cheers' motion between them. I was obsessed with the advert, and the story regarding Coca-Cola and my Father was once which stretched right back to our first ever football match together, at Wembley, just a month previous. 

It seemed like the stars all aligned and that I was destined to own this toy. What followed was one of the most arduous displays of perseverance I've ever seen as my Dad plunged pound coin after pound coin into the machine, with each desperate grasp and failure to successfully deliver the teddy into the slot resulting in moans and groans from my cold little face as I pressed it up against the glass. Finally, after around half hour, and what must have easily been £50 spent on the machine, my Father - after a half-century or so of attempts, successfully navigated the bear(s) and the way they dropped and nestled into the little delivery chamber section was something I'll never forget. Still to this day, Polar Bears are my favourite animals. Still to this day, I hope all the Sons who attend the fair next week with their Fathers can experience a moment like I did, on a night when...

... I truly felt loved.