Mothers Day

Last Sunday, a strange event took place all over the United Kingdom. It was Mothers Day and all over Our Country, dutiful offspring armed with cards and kisses made their various ways to visit the women who had given them life.

I, along with my four brothers did the same. From the remotest corners of Great Britain we came. Like salmon returning up river or the Swallows of Capistrano we made our separate journeys and like the salmon and the Swallows we arrived within a short time of each other. How? Only nature knows.

When I arrived, son number four who had traveled the furthest had already arrived and was sat on the sofa where my father used to sit. I kissed my Mother, smiled at four and he dutifully moved. The pecking order you see. I am son number one. I take his place in my father’s seat.

Within short order, the Swallows landed, next came two, then three and lastly number five. The “pup” of the litter – now a 40 year old man.

My conversations with my brothers picked up from where we left them a year ago when we had last all been together. It was if there had been no gap of a year in between. Such is our bond. I almost lost a brother in an accident. It was then at his bedside that I realised how much I loved him and my other siblings.

Then it fell silent and my Mother, now 80, started to speak. She said how nice it was for us all to be together, how our father loved it when we all got together. And she reminded us how he would march us all up to the British Legion afterwards so that he could show us off to his old comrades.

We looked at a badly taken photo on the mantelpiece – how sad, the only photograph we have of our father and his five sons. It was taken several years ago, again on Remembrance Sunday. We are in the Legion, we all wears suits and poppies, except for my father who wears his Regimental Blazer. Across his chest are medals, so many. Medals earned along with his Mentioned in Dispatches in fighting for our freedom all those years ago. I sit on his right, number three on his left, both wearing our Northern Ireland campaign medals. Next to number three sits four, he wears four decorations, earned from his time in 7 Para RHA. Five wears nothing – he tried the forces for a few weeks but his mother missed him so he was brought back. He is forever teased but we are glad he did not go. We never worried about ourselves but always worried when a brother was in a combat zone.

My father was what is called “a character”. It seems that every pub or club I visit knew of him and the stories of his exploits as a younger man are legendary. Handsome, gentle, generous, witty and charming but inside hard as steel. Even now at 58 I realise that I will never be half the man my father was and I am ashamed.

It was only much later in life did I realise that my Father was the “front man”. Although she lived quietly in my Fathers shadow, it was our Mother who was the real mainstay of the family. It was my Mother who kept my Father from being too free a spirit; it was my Mother who kept him from leading us off into some of his wilder schemes. And it is now our Mother that keeps us united as a family.

Well if I inherited anything from my parents, I suspect that my love of books came from my Father. It was the books he first read to me as a child that as influenced the say I see the World. I was brought up on Knights of The Round Table, Robin Hood, Biggles and the like. Books where traits like decency, justice, honour and respect were not laughed at as now but to be encouraged.

So what did I and to a lesser extent my brothers, inherit from my Mother? You will see. Well perhaps some of my looks, even now you can see that once my Mother would have been classed as quite a beauty. In fact, I have been told as much by older Club members. So many suitors. My father was a very lucky man.

Now my Mothers father was big in the old Communist Party and my Mother accompanied him to the meetings they used to hold in those days. But in the valleys when my mother was young who wouldn’t be a communist when children were going to school in bare feet? I would have been one. If you had heart so would you have been.

Eventually she became a member of the Labour Party and it would be true to say that a few Labour M.P.s including one former Leader has taken tea with Mother. By then I was a Nationalist and instructed to stay away when there might be visitors.

Well my Mother ripped up her Labour Party membership card several years ago when she realised what was happening to Our Country. As she said “My husband did not go running up a beach to stop the Germans just to allow a bunch of lazy, idle bloody immigrants to come and live here for nothing”. What can I say? As usual she is right.

So my Mothers goes on to say that the reason “they” have increased the price of beer and stopping people smoking in pubs and clubs is to stop the people talking to each other. Apparently when she was young, the pubs and clubs would have debating societies and people would travel miles to listen to men debate and talk about the troubles in society. The men would talk and unite against the injustice of an uncontrolled capitalist system. They would build their own Working Men’s Clubs, they would form unions. They met and they communicated, organized and then fought back against their injustices.

She finishes by saying that if the government can, by stopping the people congregating together, they can stop us organising and resisting their evil.

This starts us all off and in the end we agree that the British National Party is the only way forward for the Country and we agree to go to the Legion for a few beers in honour of our Father. We ask Mother to accompany us but she declines with “No. I didn’t drink in the Legion when your Father was alive and I can hardly start now he is gone”. She still misses him. So do I.

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