I think from time to time it does one good to reflect on the past if only to see where the road ahead leads to.

My main gripe against my late father was not due to any nastiness on his part ,no more his complete and total bloody indifference towards us.

I have always believed that hatred and negativity are as equal and valid as love and positivity.
Both are two sides of life's coin and whilst one side, generally speaking, is preferable to the other in ones existence neither are mutually exclusive and must be allowed to co-exist.

Indifference however is the killer in my estimation. To feel absolutely nothing towards either a thing or another human is amongst the greatest sins in life's tapestry, to have no views one way or another on anything and blithely meandering through life giving one big MEH! to everything.. Well you get my drift.

Whilst mother was the traditional home maker full of love and support, though there were times when I felt that was more out of duty than true feeling, Father and everything in his world revolved around him and him alone.

It would be nice if he occasionally would get mad at us over some indiscretion or other but no he would just revert to his usual, "Mother deal with it" mantra whilst at the same time being totally unconcerned or interested in the outcome just as long as it didn't intrude into his myopic world view.

I remember when my brother, Reg, died his bearing once again was one of total indifference of the type one shows when told that "Mrs Jones three streets away has died." Oh dear how sad never mind indeed and no this wasn't an old "Edwardian" type of stoicism hoving into view or the old Chindit bearing up under fire. No he genuinely felt nothing and carried on as if it was just another day whilst offering zero in the way of consolation to the mother who had just lost their son. It was moments like this that marked his card as far as I was concerned and made me decide my future feelings towards him.

Should I on the one hand hate him? At least that would be one side of life's coin or if only out of a sense of duty love him?

I'm am ashamed to say that the apple did not fall far from the tree and for the rest of his existence I viewed him with the same indifference he scatter-gunned the world around him with and, as stated earlier, it coloured my own life view re having a family so as not to put some poor sod through what we endured under the premiership of this unfeeling individual. Maybe I should have trusted my own instincts and ability to somehow not repeat his mistakes but sadly it wasn't to be.

His behaviour also extended towards my mother. Neither loved or hated she was what was deemed socially necessary to a lot of men in those times ,someone to wash cook and clean whilst he the hunter laboured six days a week mainly in support of his own needs and wants with family a distant second. In short he swapped a mother for a wife.

A wife which along with the children she bore were tolerated insofar as they didn't impinge on his carry on. Like the habitual criminal who views prison as an occupational hazard, so was his disposition to the rest of us.