betch says to spill it...

.. and so I shall. As it seems like all the cool kids are doing it I feel it's time for me to get bandwagon jumping and share the story of the time I got explamoded. Unfortunately, intertwined with this tale is the story of my parents' divorce and a fulsome helping of Daddy issues. Obviously this isn't the entire story and while my original intention was to share the gruesome details of my spectacular injury story it kind of morphed into something else. That being said, and without further ado, may I present to you...

Alex and the Model Steam Engine
a tale of fire and bad parenting

First up some background to the story. This story is set during a trial "get back together" period between my parents' splitting up and their eventual, and very welcome divorce. My parents split up when I was three and a half, it wasn't a particularly fun time for my Mother and years of having her husband's infidelity paraded around in front of her (case in point: I spend my second birthday at the zoo with my Father and his "Mistress of the Moment" the dreaded Fiona) and being constantly belittled and manipulated finally took their toll leaving her aged 29 and single, with a three year old daughter, crippling agoraphobia, panic attacks and clinical depression so bad that she refused to be left alone with her own child for fear of what she might be capable of doing. In essence: she was not a well woman. We lived with my Grandparents during that time and slowly but surely she started getting a little better (she's completely well now by the way, stronger than she ever was, totally stable and probably going kick my ass when I inevitably tell her about posting this).

Needless to say that my Father had to fuck that element of her life up too, and so a year later they got back together to "try again", moving into a shabby ex-council flat in the village where my Mother grew up. My Father continued to work in London during this time so he would stay in town during the week (and enjoy all the associated drug taking, easy women and heavy drinking that went with City life in the late 80s) and then come home on Fridays to his wife and child.

This story takes place late one Friday afternoon just before I turned five years old. I was out playing in the street with some kids that lived on the same road as me. As a kid I was a fairly cute creature - button nose, chubby cheeks, absolutely giant green eyes, shiny black hair in a bob - imagine Boo from Monster's Inc. - yeah that was me as a kid (so much so that the movie freaked my Mother out to the point where she can't actually sit through it) - superfluous information I know but things are always worse when they happen to adorable moppets aren't they? That day I was calmly minding my own business, probably lost in a daydream, when two slightly older boys asked if I wanted to look at the toy they had.

That "toy" was a real working traction engine. One of these:

I'd just like to take a moment to draw your attention to the specs of this kind of model, namely the fuel source: dry spirit tablets. Note the "dry" part of that. "Dry" not "damp", not "moist", not "slightly soggy" but "dry". Got that noted? Good.

Do you know what you shouldn't use to heat up the engine and power the thing? Liquid meths. Know what happens if you do use liquid meths to fuel one of these?






Yeah: Kaboom.

Unfortunately, I was leaning over the machine - trying to figure out how it worked -as the meths was lit and the fireball erupted outwards. The flames licked up the backs of both of my legs, they ran up my right arm searing the material of my sweater to my skin and singeing off the hair hanging on that side of my face. I can't remember it hurting. All I remember of it is the heat and turning to run as fast as I could home.

As all of this was happening my Mother was on the phone to her husband. He was due to come home that night and they were arranging what time he'd be back when she heard a blood curdling scream.

Him: "What was that?"
Her: "Oh my God, it's L____!"

Cue her dropping the phone and racing outside to see what the hell had just happened to me. I looked like I'd just staggered out of a warzone, my clothes and face were blackened with soot and what skin she could see was a livid red. Instincts from her time as a nurse must have kicked in, my Mother is superb in any kind of crisis - especially those involving me - as long as it isn't her own, and I was promptly dumped in a bath and covered with icy water, which in hindsight may not have been the best idea but at least stopped me from screaming. All in all, I can't fault her response. I had huge fist-sized blisters all up the backs of my legs, the material from my cardigan had stopped the damage to my arms from being too severe and even more luckily my face seemed to have escaped anything permanent. Still, I couldn't sit for weeks - my clearest memory of the time was lying on my front watching Dumbo on video and getting a crick in my neck from the weird angle. Oh and the bucket. That thing still gives me nightmares.

This I knew, this I remembered. The rest was news to me the first time I heard it a couple of years ago - incidentally even I was incredulous about the claims until I had been told by several different sources - and it has since become my very favourite illustration of bad paternal parenting.

My Father had been on the phone at the time it all happened, he'd heard the scream and he knew it was me. Considering he was due to be back that night anyway he obviously raced back up the motorway and home to his injured five year old daughter, right?


You haven't really been listening have you?


He in fact, does not race home immediately. In fact he doesn't come home at all that night. He instead tuns up the next day, still drunk and informs my Mother that they are going out that evening and that his parents would be babysitting me. Oh, they lived about a 45 minute drive away incidentally. My Mother now would tell him to go fuck himself and the horse he rode in on, however my Mother 18 years ago quietly, and with tears welling up, went and got her coat.

And that is how, at the age of five and with second degree burns I ended up standing up in the back seat of my parents' car for almost an hour while my still over the limit Father drove to his parents' house and my Mother silently decided that she needed a divorce.


Update: I told a good friend of mine about the contents of this post and her response was such:
"Bit fucking bleak isn't it?"

Thought I should probably point out that despite the mopey tone of this post I actually find the whole thing amusing rather than tragic. It's usually funny when I tell it. It's probably something to do with hand gestures.