A Life Well Lived

Were your parents strict?

Father was a tyrant, Mother just loved us. For example, we females had to wait on my Father hand, foot and finger, as they say. We were all afraid of him, took it in turns to serve him dinner, by the fire, and to his bed at the weekend, stayed in to put on his collar and tie and tie his shoelaces before we could go out, bribed him with a ten bob note to get him out of the house when he  was abusive, all these things because he was a controller. None of us were allowed to talk or have a drink at the meal table OR for some reason, not allowed a chair at one point?  FATHER was very generous with his belt.  He wore a Sam Brown and sometimes used it on my backside for  cheeking him. But his favourite weapon was his ” cat” which he kept by his bedside. He used this belt on my arm, usually my left arm as I came through the bedroom door when he summoned me upstairs to pay for some misdemeanor. He stayed in bed until 4pm at the weekend and, as Sunday was the day my sisters visited with their children, it was usually noisy, the kids enjoying family fun. It was my job ( according to George), to keep them quiet. If he was awakened, he would call me or bang on the floor to indicate I was to go upstairs.  I never remember Pat being punished in this way, but all my big sisters said they has similar, or worse, punishments. NB I have just asked Pat if she was ever punished by Dad: she said she once had the “ buckle end of his Sam Brown” and thereafter, if she misbehaved, he would give her “ the look” and stroke the belt buckle … kept her in line …

Mother was a sweetheart. Despite her deafness, she was fun and so, so kind. I can never remember her chastising me or smacking me.