I almost had a step dad once

I almost had a step dad once.

He was almost my step-dad because my mum never married him.  At first he impressed me because he could do card tricks. 

The first time I met him was in February 1979.  I had passed the entrance exam to go to Leeds Grammar School on a free scholarship and he gave me a lift to the interview. 

At the interview, the school governors asked me a few questions to make sure I wasn’t an idiot.  Then they asked me if I had any questions.  Just one I said.  Is it true that if you’re thick but your parents are rich, you can buy your way into this school?  They seemed to find this amusing, but they assured me it wasn’t the case, and they gave me the scholarship.

For the statistically minded out there, I was allegedly the first person ever to get free school meals there, and the school had been going since 1552.

My almost step dad was chunky and hairy with an orange soft top BMW which was full of fag ends and Rod Stewart cassettes, oh and drawings, him being an architect.

Later he drove a Cortina but it didn’t have any brakes so sometimes he’d have to swerve onto a grass verge to avoid collisions.  Towards the end he bought an Opel Manta but the engine blew up and he had to get a new one.  My mum lent him the money and he bought her some flowers.

He’d never come to the table when dinner was called but he’d come late and then microwave it all to hell and cover it with pepper. 

He thought he was still a miler because he used to run at school and he thought he knew kung fu, although trying to kung fu kick my brother on the ice proved to be a mistake as he ended up groaning in a hedge.  My mum thought I’d killed him when I played him at squash because he dived on top of the racket and it smashed some of his ribs.  More often than not, luck was not on his side.

He wore dark glasses indoors and put things in piles when he was nervous.  We called him Roy Orbison.  He said it was so we wouldn’t know what he was thinking.  Before he got in from work we used to call it Happy Hour

He wore beige socks, he drank fizzy orange in the morning when he was drying out, and he descended into alcoholism.  He wanted to die, he just didn’t know it. He had bad luck but he thought the answer to every problem was in the bottom of a bottle.  There were only more problems there.

12 years ago I became a step dad myself, ie a real one since I got married to someone with children.  At the time I thought ‘All I have to do to be a better step dad than I had is to stay conscious beyond 5.30 pm, not cook fish, chips and frozen peas all together in the deep fat fryer when paralytic, not fall down drunk in the street and have to be carried home by the neighbours and not mess the bed’.  I was pretty confident I could do it.  With hindsight, I’m not sure I was a great success.  I didn’t make the same mistakes, just lots of different ones. 

We never really got on, my nearly step dad and me.  When I was young I treated him more often than not with contempt and ridicule, but when I think of him now I feel sad, because it’s not an easy job and he gave it a go.  And so did I.  And that’s how I know.