Essex Boy: My Story (13 page)

So I was wary about working for my dad, but at the same time I was looking forward to it.
This was my chance to put into action what I was learning at college and prove what I could do, and
hopefully make my dad proud in the process.
I would head down there at 8 a.m.
every Saturday and work my arse off.
But I soon found out I wasn’t there to do any welding.
My dad’s
attitude was that you start at the bottom and work your way up – the real thinking of a grafter.
So I was on the bottom rung for duties.
Instead of making these great metal creations, I was
sweeping the yard, gathering up bits of scrap metal and wheeling them to the bins.
And I was doing jobs like that all day long until 5 or 6 p.m.
It was horrible graft, and I know that is everyday
life for a lot of people, but it just isn’t me.
I’m a slight build and a bit of a girly boy, plus I am more creative minded.
I’m just not very good at hard manual labour, no
matter how much I try.
I’m not one of these strapping lads who has the energy and power to spend all day lugging heavy things around.

If I was lucky, the one job I was allowed to do that was a step up was helping to paint.
Because the business was making signs, there was a lot of painting to do, but while this was easier than
the manual work I didn’t like it and had no interest in it at all.
I was getting impatient and frustrated – it was welding that I was learning to do as a trade, so I wanted to be having
a go at that.
I wanted to use my day on the job actually putting into practise what I was learning.
But I wasn’t getting the chance.

So, between not liking what I was seeing down at the docks with my dad, and struggling with the maths side of the welding course, I was in a dilemma.
I knew how disappointed Dad would be, but
then I thought, ‘Do I really have to do a job I don’t want to do, just to try and make my dad love me?’
I knew how crazy that sounded, so I dropped the course.
It might seem bad,
trying out three courses and not following through with any of them, but that’s how it was.
I’ve never had the patience to sit through something once I know it is not for me.

Dad was gutted when I told him I was quitting the course, but I think deep down he knew I was right, and that I’m not the same as him or Daniel, and so he didn’t give me too much
grief over it.
I carried on doing one day a week for Dad for a while, just to keep a bit of cash coming in, but after a while I quit that too.

And that was it.
I was back to square one, except this time a bit older, at seventeen.
I was jobless, penniless, with no real aim in life, living at home with my mum, just the
two of us, and really not having a clue what the future would hold.

People around me were starting to sign on, but that wasn’t something I wanted to do.
Although I was like every other boy on the estate, I still had this idea that I was going to get out of
there, and I knew signing on wouldn’t help me do that.
I could see my older mates who had signed on, and it wasn’t good for them.
Once they did that, any plans they might have had to
get a job went straight out the window.
Why would they want a job, when they got more money from benefits than they would if they were paid minimum wage?
So I thought I could do better, and I
wanted to keep myself on the lookout for work instead.

At least that was the plan – it took a while to become reality.
In fact, the next few months of my life I’m not proud of.
I just kind of wasted them away, hanging around, getting
into fights, smoking joints with my mates, and generally being a nuisance and a layabout.
Then things started to get messy, although the start of it wasn’t my fault.

I was walking down the street one day when I got stopped by a group of six lads.
I knew them from around the place, and knew they were not people to mess with.

‘Did you hit my mate the other day?’
one of them asked me, while the rest gathered round.

The thing was, I hadn’t, but I knew who he was talking about, and it was a friend of mine who had attacked his mate.
So I told him that, trying to sound cocky and confident.
‘I
didn’t, but a mate of mine did.’

He came closer to me, looking all threatening, and got into my face.
I knew I had to look like I wasn’t intimidated.

‘Don’t fucking give me all that, mate,’ I said.
‘It weren’t nothing to do with me.
Fuck off now!’

But he didn’t.
Instead he lifted his fist and went to punch me, to see if I would flinch, but I didn’t.
I held still, then carried on my attempt at hard talk.
‘Why are you
making out to hit me, mate?
Either do it or fuck off!
Let’s face it, there are six of you, and one of me, you’ll fucking kill me, but it hardly makes you seem very hard, does it?
If you
want a proper fight, let me bring a couple of mates of mine to watch my back, and we will have a one on one.’

‘All right, do that,’ he said.
‘See you back here in an hour.’

None of us knew how much it was going to escalate.
I thought it was going to be a scary fight, but just one on one.
I didn’t want to do it, but I knew it was the only chance I had of
surviving.
Duck out of it, and I’d be beaten twice as badly next time they saw me in the street.

So I rang a couple of older pals, and asked them to come down and watch my back, and told them I wanted no trouble.
Well, they only turned up with about twenty or thirty other lads!
It felt like
they had brought half of Grays with them.
I thought, ‘Oh God, this has trouble written all over it, I need to wind this up!’
but I didn’t know how.
The best I could do was beg
them to let me have my one on one with this geezer, and leave it at that, which they promised.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way.
Before I even had a chance to say anything to the guy waiting to fight me, the lot behind me just ran at him and his mates.
I don’t really
want to go into detail, but it turned into a huge fight that became brutal and vicious.
I won’t pretend I didn’t join in, of course I did – I had to.
Besides, it was these boys
who had started it with me earlier in the day.
And by the time it ended I remember I was in a white tracksuit that was totally covered in blood, some of it my own from a cut on my face, some other
people’s.
I ran home and through the front door in tears, not knowing what to do.

I burst in and Mum just looked at me in shock.

‘Mum, what do I do?
I don’t want to get in trouble, but what do I do?
It was horrible!’

‘Give me your clothes, get in the bath, and breathe,’ was all she said.
So that’s what I did.

About an hour later I was on the sofa, just about getting my thoughts together.
I was working through what the hell had happened, trying to see if there was any way I could have stopped it.
I
was shaky from the adrenalin, and freaked out by what I’d just been through.
What the hell kind of life was I living?
I knew I needed to get out of Grays.

Then there was a heavy knock at the door, and I felt ill.
‘Fuck, that’s got to be the police,’ I thought.
And both Mum and I went to answer it.
Well, things were only getting
worse.
There were ten lads outside my door, all armed with weapons – cricket bats and all sorts.
I shit myself, but I’m not one to show it in those situations.
Instead I could feel
myself getting angry.
But before I could say or do anything, my mum beat me to it!
She leapt in front of me and started shouting at the lads.
‘Leave my fucking son alone!
Piss off before you
have me to deal with, you hear me?’

You had to see it to believe it.
She is as brave as they come, and when she is feeling feisty .
.
.
well, watch out!
But I was seventeen, and much as I appreciated the attempt, it hardly made me
look good.
So I said, ‘Mum, get in the house and shut the door.
Just watch through the window to make sure nothing too bad happens to me.’

And she did, and I stood there on my own, thinking, I’m getting fucked.
I had no idea what to do.
So I tried to take the upper hand.
‘Right, boys, what do you want?’

‘Well, our mate’s been beaten up, so what do you think?’

‘You started on me when I was on my own, so I had to defend myself.
It’s over.
If you fuck me up now, you know this is only going to get worse.’

But let’s face it, reasoning wasn’t going to stop them.
I was just buying myself time in case a miracle happened.
And then it did, in the form of my two friends from the off licence
round the corner, who just happened to walk by.
They loved me, and I had known them for years, and they always looked out for Mum and me.
‘Our little Kirk and Julie from round the way,’
they used to call us, when we popped in to get my mum a drink.
But while they were nice to us, they were scary geezers in their late twenties, who made our seventeen-year-old really serious fight
look like a joke.

‘What’s going on here, Kirk?’
they asked.
And as soon as they realized, they told the boys, ‘Fuck off, and if anything happens to Kirk, we’re gonna do
ya!’

And so the lads left, although not without giving me some dirty looks, and that was the problem solved – for the time being.
I knew they were never going to just accept that they needed to
leave me alone.
Instead I started hearing through the grapevine that they were plotting to get me, which put me on edge, and made me more careful about going out on my own.
I knew it was only going
to be a matter of time.

A Father and Son Reunion

As a surprise for my eighteenth, my dad sorted out a meal for me.
He picked Daniel and me up in a limo along with his family, and we went to London: to The Ivy restaurant.
The
Ivy!
I couldn’t believe that I was going from Grays to that – I had never eaten in a place so posh in my life.
And if I needed proof that it was where all the celebs went, Kate Moss was
there, sitting at the next table, which was insane.
That night Dad and I got on better than we ever had.
It was because I was now eighteen – he started treating me like a man, and talking to
me like I was one, and it felt right.

But his real present to me wasn’t the trip to the restaurant – he told me about it in the car on the way there, and it’s the best pressie I have ever had.

When everyone was busy in their own conversations, he said to me, ‘Kirk, what do you want for your eighteenth?
You’re a man now but you ain’t got nothing to show for it.
Your
brother is qualified, working and living by himself – you need to sort yourself out.’

‘Well, Dad, give me a flat as well, then,’ I said, chancing my luck that what he had done for Daniel he might do for me, even though I wasn’t working for him.
‘I need to
get out of this area or I’ll end up in proper trouble.
I need a place in another town.’

‘You can’t look after yourself, Kirk, that’s a stupid idea,’ he said.

‘No!’
I replied.
‘Trust me, Mum is never in as she is working so hard, so I cook and clean for myself all the time!’

‘OK, Kirk,’ he said, ‘I’ll go into an agreement with you.
I can’t just let you have a house, but we can make a deal.
Daniel’s about to move out of his flat so
I’ll give it to you.
All you’ve got to do is get a job.
I don’t care where your job is, just get yourself a job and make sure you have some kind of an income.
As long as
you’ve got money to pay your bills and your food shopping, get yourself to work, and the rest of that, I’ll give you the flat and pay for everything there.
But the minute you get
sacked, I’ll chuck you out of it and you’ll be out on the street like that.’

‘Deal!’
I shouted, proper excited.

Then it was just a case of finding that job.
Dad had a mate called Andy Walker, a great guy who has been around in my life for years – close enough that I call him Uncle Andy.
Despite
being as mad as a hatter, he has a good insight into people.
He will really stick up for me when he thinks I’m right, but when he doesn’t, he’ll tell me straight, ‘Oi, you
are pissing your dad off!
Sort it out now and be good.’
And it works on me every time.

Andy knew I was looking for a job and was keen to see that my deal with my dad happened.
He knew a woman who ran a clothes shop in Lakeside and he put me forward for the role, and I got it!
It
was only serving customers behind the till, but it was a start.
I can’t say I loved doing the actual job, as it was pretty boring, but what I did like was being able to say I had a job, and
people knowing I had a wage.
I think until then I had been seen as a bit of a no hoper, especially by Dad and his side of the family.
Although they loved me, they looked down on me a bit, because
not only had I not had a job until then, I hadn’t even had an idea of what I might want to do.
So once I had a job, well, they were impressed and pleased with me.

That aside, I knew I needed to get out of my life in Grays.
If I stayed I would get in another fight – I might even end up killing someone, or get killed myself.
And if I was lucky enough
to survive, if I didn’t sort myself out I was going to end up as a drug dealer, as there were no other options.
As soon as I started that job, Dad stuck to his word and gave me the flat.
It
was on the outskirts of Grays in Badger’s Dene, one of the nicer areas, and was over two floors, with the whole of the top floor, which had originally been the loft, turned into an amazing
bedroom.
On the day I moved in Dad took me out and bought me everything I needed to set me up, like a microwave and an ironing board.
Then it was down to me.

Because of that, I owe everything to him, as he really did save my life.
He might not always have been there when I was a kid, and up to the age of eighteen, I definitely owe everything to my
mum.
But then my dad gave me a chance in life, took me out of Grays, and I love him for that.
I might sound soft saying it, but it does bring a tear to my eye even now thinking that he did that for
me.

And I think it worked just the way he meant it to, because moving into that house is when I really did grow up.
I don’t mean all the crazy things I had done when I was younger, trying to
prove I was a man – I mean I started to act like one for real.
I was taking my job seriously, turning up on time and working hard, then when I got home I was cooking for myself and cleaning
the place.
It was the start of a whole new life.

After I had been in the clothes shop in Lakeside for about six months, Dad bought this amazing big house on a farm in a nearby village called Bulphan, for him, Stacie and
Mason.
But there was a lot of work that needed to be done, and as he knew I had been getting bored in the shop, he told me to come and work at the farm as a labourer, helping out on the building.
The plan was to completely redo the big house, so we built a little house on the grounds as well, for the three of them to live in while we were working on the bigger one.

By now Dad and I were getting on a lot better, but I still could never say that we were really close.
There was always a barrier between us that I could never put my finger on, but I was pretty
sure Stacie had something to do with it.

Then Christmas 2006 came around.
As I said before, I never enjoyed Christmas at my Dad’s because it was always uncomfortable, and by now Stacie and I didn’t even want to be in the
same room.
But this year was particularly bad, especially Christmas dinner, because it was obvious the problem wasn’t just between me and Stacie – she and Dad seemed to have fallen out
too.
She was heavily pregnant with their second child, by then, but no one was talking; not one word was spoken through the whole meal.
It was the worst Christmas ever.
I’d rather have sat in
the house with no electricity with my mum, like we had done all those years before, than go through that day.

So we stayed until Boxing Day and then Dad dropped me at Mum’s house.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of what happened, but I think Dad went home and Stacie had gone to her
parents’, so he decided to go out.
When he got home at 2 a.m.
Stacie had bagged up all his belongings and their relationship was over.

He called me the next day and said, ‘Hi, Kirk, do you want to come around mine?’

‘Not really,’ I replied honestly.
‘We just sat there and Stacie didn’t want to speak to us.
I hardly wanna come back to that.’

‘Stacie’s left.
It is just me.’

‘What?
What’s happening?’

‘Stacie’s gone for good.
She got the hump and we’re over.’

Instead he gave me his new address – luckily one of his rental homes, a flat, was free so he was staying there – and I popped round.
And that was it.
Things changed from that minute,
and I suddenly got back the dad I had always wanted.

He said, ‘Right, Kirk, I gotta kit out this new place of mine.
Do you wanna go to Ikea with me and help me get stuff?’

And we went and bought everything to make it a proper place, and spent the next two days putting it all together – the bookcases, TV stand, cupboards, the lot.
And sometimes we chatted
about all sorts of things, and other times we just worked next to each other in silence, but the whole time I could feel our bond growing.
Everything I imagined other kids felt about their dads
when they were hanging out together, I started to feel for the first time in those two days.

And it didn’t stop with the house being kitted out.
I was with him all the time from then on.
His place was really close to mine, so I could walk there in no time, and I’d go round
while he was at work and sort things out for him.
He’d call me up and say, ‘Kirk, do you mind taking those clothes to the laundrette for me?’

Or I would ring him.
‘Dad, what time are you going to be home from work?
I was gonna make us dinner.’

And I’d get it all prepared for when he came in.
I really liked doing these things, because I could, and I loved that he needed me to do stuff for him.
Then afterwards we would watch a
movie or something, and I’m not embarrassed to say, I would cuddle up to him while we watched it.
It was like the little boy in me, who hadn’t got the cuddles off my dad when I was
younger, was making up for the lost time.

Other days we would go shopping at Lakeside, or just chill out, heading to the cinema or the pub.
He started getting me to hang out with him and his mates, and I was one of the boys.
He was
letting me into a part of his life that I had never been involved with before.
We were like best mates, and we hardly left each other’s side.

Even my mum, who you might think wouldn’t have been happy about it, who might have resented her ‘mummy’s boy’ suddenly spending so much time with the man who had left our
family, was really pleased for us.
I am sure a part of her found it hard when I would say, ‘Oh sorry, Mum, I can’t see you tonight, I’m off to see Dad.’
But she kept it well
hidden.
She knew growing up it was the thing in my life that used to make me cry the most, Dad not really being in my life.
She was the one who had heard me crying myself to sleep when I was
little, and when she asked, ‘What’s up?’
I told her, ‘I want a dad.
I want my dad!
I just want him to love me.’
I know it broke her heart, so for things to be sorting
themselves out, even if it was fourteen years late, was still better than nothing.
When I came home with a smile on my face she would tell me, ‘I’m proud of you, Kirk.
I’m glad
you’re getting on with your dad.’

I get upset even writing this.
She was so lovely and understanding, and tried so hard all my life.
I didn’t even realize how hard things might have been for her, mentally, physically and
financially, until I started writing them down in this book.

Around this time, Dad really started splashing the cash on me.

He’d say, ‘Here, Kirk, do you want a new watch?
This five-grand Cartier one is really nice, I’ll buy it for you.’

Or, ‘Here’s two grand – go and do a bit of clothes shopping, you need some new outfits.’

I’d suddenly gone from having fuck all money, and I really do mean fuck all, to having thousands of pounds.
And I was spending it so fast, I didn’t really grasp the value of it.
When
I passed my driving test, it was crazy.
Just before I went in for it, Dad said, ‘What car do you want if you pass, Kirk?
I have to buy you your first car.’

I wanted a Renault Clio.

‘You’re not having one of them, they’re shit!
What do you really want?’

‘That’s all I want, Dad.
That, or a Peugeot 206.’

And he laughed and went off and bought me a Range Rover.
A Range Rover for my first car!
I was so grateful, but the downside is that when you start with a top-of-the-range car, you are never
going to want anything less.

Another time he asked Daniel and me, ‘Do you want to come on holiday with me and me mates?’

‘Are you fucking serious?!’

‘Yeah, come on, we’re off to Ibiza.
I’ll pay for it all, so you don’t need to worry about anything.’

And off we went, and had a great holiday with him.
Apart from a trip to Minorca that we had taken as a family when he and my mum had still been together, which I couldn’t even remember,
this was the first time I had been away with him.
It was our first proper holiday, and I loved it.
He was becoming like my best mate.
I was only gutted that there was no way to get Mum involved,
and there were times lying on the sun lounger in the grounds of our private villa when I had a real knot of guilt in my stomach, thinking of her sat at home alone in a grotty council flat.

Back in the UK, Dad moved out of the flat he had been staying in temporarily, and bought himself a massive house in Benfleet with a games room and an indoor swimming pool.
But I was still seeing
him just as much.