L.if.E (BoyxBoy)

Celebrations

“You ready Ly” asked Adam.

“Yeah, give me a minute will you,” I snapped back at him, “it isn’t as though the taxi is going to go without us.”

“It isn’t that,” he retaliated, “the meters running and that costs”

“F*ck sake Adam, don’t be such a skinflint”

“I’m not, it’s just that I’d rather spend the money on an extra pint or two than put it in the drivers pocket” said Adam as he walked toward the door to indicate he would go without me if necessary, something he had done before, so I knew he wasn’t joking.

“Okay, I’m ready.  What you think, am I okay?” I asked, twirling round so he could see all of me in my new suit.

“Jeez, you’re the f*cking style queen, not me” he laughed back at me.

“Very funny, am I okay though”

“Yes you look great, now come on”

I walked out the front door of Adams new little terraced house, and waited for him to lock up before we both got into the waiting taxi.

Adam, unknown to me, had completed a football pools coupon every week for the last couple of years and then five months before my eighteenth birthday actually won a modest amount, which gave him the funds to buy a small three-bedroomed terraced house in our local town.  Immediately, he asked me to come and live with him, which was like a red rag to a bull to my father.

Of course I jumped at the chance and packed my belongings straight away, but my dad had other ideas.  Why he should stand in my way I will never understand, he had made it clear since I got beat up that I was not welcome in his company, and always made sure he made life as unbearable for me as he could.

I had packed my few belongings into four large cardboard boxes and one medium suitcase and placed them in the hall ready for Adam to come pick me up with his mate, Glyn, who owned a Ford Escort 1300. 

Now don’t go getting the idea that this was a beautiful supped-up vehicle with a custom paint job, flashy lights and an ICE sound system; like most young drivers then, it was a rust bucket on wheels that they had bought by scraping together every penny they could acquire.  However Glyn’s was more than a rust bucket, it was a rust bucket with style, as it had a broken exhaust that made it sound like a gang of Hells Angel motor-bikers had made a detour down the road and everyone would come out to see what all the noise was.  However, it was a means of transport and it got Glyn from A to B and most of his friends too.  It was amazing in those days that a person with a car was never without friends.

As I brought down the last few items and stuck them a box that had a little more room than the others, my father decided to make an appearance from the lounge.   I initially thought he had come to wish me well and see me off, but deep down I knew this was a thing never to happen.

“So you think you can get up one morning, pack everything in the afternoon and then just leave, do you?” he said in his deep threatening voice. 

It was a tone I knew would ultimately lead to me being hit, my sister crying and running to her room and my mother sidling into the kitchen to potter around and crash a few pots and pans about to drown the noise we would soon be making.

He started by kicking one of the boxes, knocking it over by the main door and spilling its contents over the floor.

“There had better be nothing of mine in any of those boxes,” he snarled.

“Why should there be, it’s just my stuff” I said as calmly as I could.

“Well that alarm clock isn’t yours!”