Took me a while to get my head around all this and I might just recant and retract the whole lot if I decide that this is too much for such a very public place. But at this very point in time, I could care less what others think. It could all be a pack of lies.
I'm the first son of English parents who emigrated to Australia shortly before I was born, just north of Melbourne.
Both my parents grew up in Epsom, Surrey (England) and have always been horse people and the lifestyle that that engenders has gone a long way towards defining that which is them as well as that which is me.
My Dad passed up an art scholarship as a kid to become a steeplechase jockey until a horse landed on him, putting a quick end to that career. He also was lucky enough to be caught up in the last days of National Service and was sent to serve with the King's Troop (the Royal Horse Artillery) where he and a friend immediately got sick of shoveling horse shit and taking bullshit from officer-grade upper class twits so they walked off the job, which caught them both a stretch in Colchester Military Corrective Training Centre (the Glasshouse).
My mother. A horse person through and through, she was always active in animal rights (which eventualy led to me and my brother being accomplices during a night-time raid where she stole a couple of horses from an illegal butcher). After doing the activist and a mod-type thing (she had a scooter and all) in the early '60s she got into horse training where she met my Dad on Epsom Downs.
But enough backstory - back to me. Shortly after I was born in Australia homesickness started to wear at their marriage so off we went, back to England. Not having enough to float all three of us home, my Dad put me and my mother on a cruise ship and stowed away on a cargo ship where he learned how to cook on a boat and surprisingly little Portuguese.
Shortly after my brother was born back in Epsom, homesickness turned into sick-of-being-home and off we went to Canada. My parents had a rocky marriage at the best of times and split up shortly after we emigrated. I still think she was a pretty good, albeit strict, mother; although hindsight leads me to believe she was perhaps a bit of a sociopath. Once in Canada my Dad eventually established himself as a harnessmaker which, due to it being a bit of a niche market, he still does today at the age of 72. I get on with him just fine and have always had the greatest respect for him.
My mother eventually remarried when I was 14. A drunken and violent Lonesome Cowboy Bert-type of a lout, 3-piece sky-blue polyester suit, string tie, shitkicker boots and all. Not surprisingly, things went south quickly with him but the evil fuck had bitten off more than he could chew when it came to my mothers' temper. She was a lot quicker to pick up a kitchen knife or a shovel than he any of his many guns and that usually ended the discussion. She stubbornly gave as good as she got before finally kicking him out for good in rural Alberta for the one crime she wouldn't tolerate; habitual unemployment. I'd already left by then; at 15 they couldn't stop me leaving and my Dad helped me with rent so I could graduate high school. My brother moved in with my Dad and his shiny new wife shortly thereafter.
By the time I left home I'd lost count of the number of times we'd moved. I know it was well over twenty with over a half dozen different schools in the mix. I probably moved at least fifteen more times myself before I came to the realisation that I didn't have to and started trying to think ahead. I've had lots of jobs, a few of them satisfying, even fewer with a future, but again I've found myself slowing down. I still get a little anxious though, when I realise I've been in the same house and the same job for ten years.
I've done bad things and paid the consequences. I've done good things and paid the consequences. I got married and finally started learning how to be an adult human. I was lucky enough to find a woman who's been able to tolerate me thus far through the last eighteen years, including eleven years of marriage.
Two years ago a friend and I rode out west and back on our motorcycles. He on one bought specifically for the trip, and me on one that I'd owned for 10 years and rebuilt myself. And as soon as we got back my wife and I flew to the states where I held my mother's hand for three hours while she died horribly in a hospital in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere Montana from the ravages of multiple cancers. Despite the circumstances, I'm glad we got that final slice of time but I still feel terribly sorry for her new husband of four years, who is a truly decent, gentle and now solitary man. Those four years were probably the most peaceful, uncomplicated and well-deserved years of her life.
Today, I'm a 45 year old male who still doesn't know what he wants to do if and when he grows up. Maybe tomorrow will tell.
I've already described my introduction to Zappa elsewhere recently and feel no urge to regurgitate that as well.
I've got two dogs, a cat and a turtle, all of whom were rescued in one way or another. I still get on better with animals than most people. A dogs' lies are always fairly transparent.
And I'm a would-be comedian who's been told repeatedly not to give up his day job.
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But then I'll have to include the part where that same summer I came home from school and our house was fitted out with new (to us) furniture as well as a small collection of SS paraphernalia...