Phil A True Life Story

However, dad wasn’t stupid, he knew we were going to get out again, so he’d sneak up the stairs, not letting any of them squeak or groan as he stood on each step.

He would stand outside the door of our bedroom, leaning on the wall, until one or the other of us, decided to be a little daring and go to see what the girls were doing.

One of us boys would open the door, sneak across the landing, then try to scare the girls, by jumping in on them and shouting boo.

We had thought this was funny, until either one of us, turned to run back into our own bedroom.

It was at this point we would notice dad, who would say and what do you think your doing out of bed.

Now that would make you jump out of your skin, firstly because you hadn’t seen him there to start with, then all of a sudden he was there, you’d then put your head down and say, I don’t know.

This was hard to answer, because in the first place, he knew what we were doing and in the second place he’d seen what we had done.

I have no doubt at all, that he laughed himself, at what we did, though I suppose he had to put on a hard face.

He would slap our backsides in the first instance, tell us to get back into bed and if he caught anyone of us out of bed again, we would be in serious trouble.

As stated, there were no locks on our doors yet, so getting a slapped backside was nothing to any of us, we’d had that many times before, I suppose we had gotten used to it.

Thinking we were clever, when we thought the coast clear, one of us would do what we’d been doing all along, we’d get out of bed, sneak across the bedroom on our tip toes.

So that no one could hear that, we might be out of bed again, we would open the bedroom door very quietly and again sneak across to the girl’s room.

Now we didn’t know, that, dad would still be stood there, outside our bedroom door, we thought we’d heard him go downstairs, how wrong we were, he’d be stood leaning on the wall, just waiting for one of us to open the door again.

He’d wait until we got half way across the landing, to the girls room, then he’d say “and where do you think your going”, which made ever one of us jump out of our skins for the second time, it was really dark in the landing / hallway, you couldn’t see a foot in front of you.

No wonder we jumped, but dad thought this was real funny, so it was ok for dad to make us jump, but not ok for me or Adrien to make the girls jump.

As an excuse for sneaking out of our bedroom, I would often come up with a good excuse and say, “I was just going to the toilet, but you made me jump and it scared me, dad would say “then why are you running back to your room, I thought you needed the toilet”.

I’d say, “Because you scared me”, sometimes this worked, so we didn’t get into any more trouble, but this didn’t always work, we’d then be in trouble, or at least I would be.

Now even though dad may have laughed, because he’d made one of us jump, it wasn’t funny to any of us.

It would certainly make us run back to our beds and hide under the sheets, I mean we were only kids, when all’s said and done.

The landing was so dark, you couldn’t see anything, so yes, it scared us to hear dad’s voice.

Especially so, because we couldn’t see him, dad found this funny, often he couldn’t stop laughing, he’d found it so funny.

However, this would depend on if he was in a good mood or a bad mood, if he’d been arguing with mum, he was always in a bad mood.

That meant we were really in trouble, because at these times he never laughed, he’d knock you back into the bedroom with one swipe of his hand, then say “now get into bed and don’t get out again or woe betide you”.

Now when dad said something like this, it was best to do what he said, otherwise not taking notice, could lead you into some real trouble, if after that, he had to come back up again, you really were for the high jump.

I mean, he wouldn’t just give you a smacked bottom; he’d really go to town on you, not with his hand either, more often than not, it was with a bamboo cane, it wasn’t on your fingers either; it was always on your bare backside.

He’d hit you with the cane that hard, that it made you writhe around in pain, trying to hold your bottom with your hands, he’d whack you again and again, even if your hands were in the way.

He would try to remove your hands and still hit you with the stick at the same time, this often resulting in your fingers and backs of your hands being badly bruised.

It was never just one whack, often it was many and because he did it in the dark, he couldn’t see where he was hitting you.

Hence, more often than not, it was all over your body, your hands, your back, your bottom and even your leg’s and arms, it was sometimes that bad, that we couldn’t go to school the next day.

Mum sometimes went mad with dad over what he’d done, even if they had been arguing previously, but she was just as bad at times, sometimes even worse, then they’d start arguing again.

Dad said, “Well if you don’t want me to make them behave, why do you tell me to tell them off, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be telling them off would I”.

“Yes”, mum would say, “but you go overboard when there’s no need to”, “right” he’d say, “Well you tell them in future, don’t ask me to”.

At that, there might be a large pause between what they might say to each other, then dad might say, “You’d better look at their bottoms in the morning, they may be bruised”.

He would have said that, in a nice way, not wanting to argue anymore and without shouting at mum.