Extract from It's All About Me (All The Bloody Time!) by Charlie Ellington
Forward
Retrospect is a wonderful thing, or so they say, so here’s a retro-controversial statement to kick off my warts and all autobiography, which created a core belief that has moulded much of my adult life: ‘It feels like the most maternal thing my Mum ever did for me was provide nine months lodgings in her womb.’ Now there’s one thing I feel I must point out at this stage; there’s a big difference in not being loved and not feeling loved, just the same as there’s a big difference in not having love for your offspring and being unable to show love you may have. I believe Mum fell into the latter of these two categories and was to be so enveloped in herself and her illness she was, or became, incapable of showing me maternal love.
I wasn’t to feel maternal love until long after she died, (in fact I still felt fear as I looked from afar as she lay in her coffin and my sisters crooned over her). Dad filled the void and as a child I ignored the pain of not feeling love from her pretty much by ignoring her and her precious illness.
I entered the world on 11th July 1968, born blue through lack of oxygen and have been fondly reminded the most outstanding feature I had (aside from my colour) was my nose, inherited along with my excessive love of pepper, from Mum. Big noses have their uses, as I discovered later in life mainly as an oral sex aid. Too graphic? Well I warned you it is warts and all.
I have been musing for many years about putting pen to paper; or rather fingers to keyboard, totally for the cathartic benefits, maybe if I can get a publisher interested it may be of help to others who have hit similar problems in life and also in some way to make amends to those people I have hurt along the way. I shall take you on a journey of chronic addiction (alcohol), a powerful child ego state that only knows how to sabotage in the adult world. Arrests, three suicide attempts, a spell on a psychiatric ward (a good week that was). Also a complete inability to form lasting friendships or relationships.
I expect a range of emotions to be encountered along the way (which is just about the whole point; I am’ therapied’ out now) as I write and hope to coming closer to understanding why I’m like I am, and maybe get a second chance at a new life of sobriety. Readers alike may experience the relevant emotions too I hope from fear to love, depression to ecstasy, anger to guilt and back. I developed a penchant for humour, transcending into a very black form at some stages (perfected during 14 years in the Fire Service at a major UK airport and three years with a local authority Fire Brigade as a retainer) and an ability to ‘people please’ and erect personality facades in a chameleon manner that even had me believing the subterfuge at times, so complex was the woven web of deceit.
Moving on to medical retirement with a diagnosed psychiatric condition (Mixed Anxiety Disorder – nice acronym huh?) that was to leave me considered permanently disabled to carry out fire-fighting and rescue duties and a spell or two on a psychiatric ward and two rehab’s -one based around cognitive behavioural therapy and another based around Alcoholic Anonymous’ 12 step fellowship model (that would have had Bill.W turning in his grave, for starters because the Big Book ((A.A.’s bible)) states help is given freely from one alcoholic to another, not in exchange for thousands of pounds).
In the early stages of the preparation for this book, I discovered quite a few patterns or cycles of behaviour in myself, the main one being – Period of application-self destruct/sabotage-failure, which will be illustrated time and time again, although with degrees of subtlety. Also some quite astonishing coincidences, such as my Dad’s, Mum’s and own career being cut short by illness at ages 33, 36 and 32 respectively. Now although I am still formulating my own beliefs on whether there is any such thing as coincidence, I struggle to put this down to learnt behaviour or subconscious fate. Nonetheless, there we all were, on the career ‘scrapheap’ at ages in our lives when we should have been at the peak of our professional lives knocking on the door of Bishopdom (Dad), Consultant Paediatrician (Mum) and Station Officer (fire-service rank, me).
Well, better not start rambling and I certainly don’t want to give too much of the story away; so welcome one and all to the account of my life to date, a story of revenge, disaster, petty risk taking, the power of love within a family and hopefully a happier, better understood second half of my life. I dedicate this piece of work to my dad, a gentleman of yester-year with the patience of a Saint and himself a writer of some note; my cousin Bill, without whom I am quite sure I wouldn’t be here today and finally my children, Mike and Hannah who I love unequivocally but have had a very strange way of showing it sometimes, as I found myself a parent when I still had no idea of how to behave like an adult.
Chapter one
My mum was highly intelligent, probably too much so for her own well-being - over analytical, self-obsessed and a hypochondriac. The latter two traits (and now I analyse it probably the third as well) I was definitely to inherit. She was not a maternal type; a single child from a broken marriage (almost unheard of in 1946) suffering ostracism by society, bullying at school for being fat and feeling like the baggage she had to carry from flat to flat with her ‘mummy’ as she always called her. Yes a very unhappy childhood, seldom talked about. Mum was a General Practitioner with a glittering career ahead of her in the world of Paediatrics. My dad was and is a man of the Cloth, a Church of England priest and a gentleman (quite literally) of the old order. Harrow/Oxford educated, descending from Ernest Charles Ellington, founder of ‘Ellingtons the Stationers – London.’ Which some may recall before liquidation following the old man’s death in 1989.
My birth year, 1968 must have been a fantastically exciting time for all those interested in space exploration, pop music and sleek Italian sports cars, which is exactly what dad drove in the shape of a two plus two Alpha-romeo. Personally I recall little of the ‘swinging sixties’ save for the back-end of my potty training aged around two when I remember introducing a little wooden toy train into the pan and crapping into the funnel. I had a sister three years my senior, Amanda, and post April 1971 another one to add to the collection, Sophie. I fail to remember any pet names our parents had for Amanda but dad affectionately referred to me as ‘Yocko’ and Sophie as ‘Pudding’ as she was rather chubby.
Two family dogs adorned the place (Whiskey and Soda; mongrels with a bit of Border terrier and Whippet) making the perfect middle-class family complete. Or that surely is how things must have appeared, but beneath the calm waters were unseen undercurrents. Raw jealousy on Dad’s part towards mum and her high earning career and an over-possessiveness for his wife of wonderful brain and glamorous looks, ate away like acid over the years at the relationship, culminating in stress induced illness and her eventually straying into the arms of another man.
Yes, I can say with some confidence and little remorse that it feels like the most maternal thing mum did for me in my early years was to provide lodgings in her womb for nine months, and I became the apple of my dad’s eye, more than compensating for a lack of maternal love in a quietly effeminate way. I was later to feel suffocated by the imbalance of females in the childhood home, which was ruled like a rod of iron by Mum, who I very quickly developed a core fear of, which lasted beyond her own death, following a nine month hunger strike, incarcerated in a psychiatric ward in her last act of orchestration and self-pity. Even the dogs, Whiskey and Soda were bitches, leading me in later life to hiding behind a facade of machismos. But for now I became the joker, constantly trying to make my distinctly not amused younger sister laugh with a bombardment of silly faces.
ABOUT CHARLIE ELLINGTON:
At 43 years of age, Charlie considers himself to be firmly middle aged, both in mind and body; fully equipped with all the increasing aches and pains of physical and mental deterioration that come with a 1968 series human being. For some unknown reason, although lacking a sound education, he has been gifted with a penchant for writing various pieces of work for most of his life. Charlie thinks it started around age 11 when he won a competition held by a local newspaper in his home town of Altrincham in Cheshire. Since then he has written dark, satirical poetry, humorous political satire and the odd piece for publications in the fire service field, which was his career for 15 years during his twenties and thirties.
Finding himself medically retired ten years ago with a psychological disorder, Charlie thought it may be of benefit, cathartically, to embark on writing his life story. The piece that is published here is an extract from the first section of the autobiography, which is still currently a work in progress. He is not sure when he will complete the work, but one of the nice things about writing for and about ones-self is that there is no time limit or deadline one has to work within. Charlie is very pleased and grateful that Sarah Thomas at ‘The Artillery of Words’ deemed his work worthy of publication. He hopes readers will enjoy this insight into his rather strange world.
Finding himself medically retired ten years ago with a psychological disorder, Charlie thought it may be of benefit, cathartically, to embark on writing his life story. The piece that is published here is an extract from the first section of the autobiography, which is still currently a work in progress. He is not sure when he will complete the work, but one of the nice things about writing for and about ones-self is that there is no time limit or deadline one has to work within. Charlie is very pleased and grateful that Sarah Thomas at ‘The Artillery of Words’ deemed his work worthy of publication. He hopes readers will enjoy this insight into his rather strange world.
