ABSTRACT
I grew up with a very dysfunctional mother and father. The one thing they did agree about unanimously was their dislike for each other’s parents. According to my mother, my paternal grandmother was a ‘prostitute’ who married my violent and alcoholic Irish grandfather and bore him seventeen children. My paternal grandfather was one of the first policemen to pound the pavements in Brentford when he was sober and to race his horses when he was not. He was an enormous, intimidating man, but my father had fond memories of dancing on the bar of The Black Lion public house in Hounslow to entertain the customers when he was three years old. The eldest brother ‘Jack’ raced the horses when things were flush and then all of the boys delivered coal with the same horses when they were bust.
