I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [6]
It was 25 October 1962, and on the other side of the Atlantic, President ‘JFK’ Kennedy had just pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war. Could I just have experienced my own personal Cuban Missile Crisis?
Yes, I could have.
And so, in summary, mine was a childhood of undeniable hardship – a chilling and far-from-delicious cocktail of neglect, solitude, domestic strife, and abuse.19
I was, if you like, A Child Called It. This was Alan’s Ashes. A protagonist dealt a really shoddy hand by hard-hearted parents. (They’re dead now and my mum’s sister Valerie, who disputes my version of events pretty vociferously, has gone medically demented so I’m really the gospel here.)
But it wasn’t all foul-tasting. For example, I remember the intense joy I felt when my father slipped on some cake and cracked his head open. It was the day of my ninth birthday, and as I sat effortlessly reading a book aimed at 11–12-year-olds, I heard a commotion. It was my father.
‘Delivery for Mr Partridge! Delivery for Mr Partridge!’ he was saying.
He meant me, rather than himself, and although he could have eliminated the obvious ambiguity by saying ‘Alan Partridge’ or ‘Master Partridge’, my instincts told me that he was using the third person, so probably did mean me.
I ran into the kitchen. And there was my father – normally so cruel, as I think I’ve made abundantly clear – holding a cake. It was a ruby red birthday cake, with my name piped on to it in reasonably accomplished joined-up writing. I could barely contain my excitement – more at the cake than the writing. I adored cakes, but was only allowed to eat any on special occasions such as after meals. I began to run over, licking my lips as I sprinted.
Although blessed with cat-like co-ordination, something made me lose my bearings. Perhaps I’d been pushing myself too hard with the book for 11–12-year-olds and my brain was scrambled. Whatever it was, I misjudged my proximity to the table and clattered against it. The cake fell from it and smashed on to the floor in a hail of crumbs and redness and cream.
My father surveyed the scene, his face slowly crumpling with anger. He crouched down, taking the weight of his body on his two haunches and then he addressed me: ‘You’ll never amount to anything,’ he said. ‘You’re that to me.’20
On the word ‘that’, he held his finger and thumb one, maybe two, centimetres apart as if to say ‘not very much’.
I didn’t know what to say, my mind blasted by the twin concerns of spilt cake and parental cruelty. He turned to go and put one of his angry feet on to the remains of the cake. This acted as a lubricant, destroying any traction his foot might have had with the floor. It shot forward and, with his balance now a distant memory, he came crashing to the floor. His back took the first hit, smashing against lino and cake with a bang – ‘bang’. His rump was next – ‘doof’ – followed by his skull – ‘crack’. And for a second he was motionless, before blood began to spill from the back of his head.
As my father lay on the ground, the tension – much like the physical integrity of Dad’s skull – was broken. Suddenly, all the years of neglect, which could easily make a book in its own right and definitely a film, were lifted. The hardship, the loneliness, the disappointment squeezed out of my eyes in the form of hot salt tears. Was I crying or laughing? I didn’t know. All I knew was that these tears felt like a monsoon on a parched African savannah to the delight of a proud but easy-going black farmer. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.
Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter. I’m back at that tree as an eight-year-old child, my nose still bleeding (but it should scab up in a few minutes). All those childhood thoughts are racing through my mind, even though some of the incidents above haven’t yet happened, so would