Coming from a poor background in a large city, I always felt out of place, confused and older than my years. I was shy, lonely and lacked attention. My father was an abusive violent alcoholic who was hardly home except at the weekends, mostly drunk, yelling, screaming and playing his jazz music loudly into the early hours. My sister, brother, mother and myself used to dread hearing the car revving up the driveway to a sudden stop because we knew the war was about to start. Dad always seemed to be coming home late on the weekends, drunk and angry. He drank most of wages each Saturday and Sunday. My mother coming from a quite farming community put up with a lot from him and she was forced to work in a hard physical farm job trying to pay the bills. My sister, brother and myself looked after ourselves a lot after school and grew up as independent children. We had to, as mother was working long hours to keep us all fed. I remember early days when we were young, mum feeding us bread and fried dripping or fat, cause that is what she had growing up during and after the depression and there was much else. Often growing up there was no money so we used to buy chips from the local fish shop to feed the whole family. Mum tried her best in the essentials but I feel she couldn’t give us the love and affection we needed and wanted growing up because she herself was abused by my father.