Putting One's Head Above The Parapet
Table of Contents
Foreword
Adoption
Amy
Aunties (of the paternal kind)
Axel & Damia
Barbara
“Barnaby”
“Ben” & Those Devon Churches
Berck-sur-Mer
Blackpool
Brit Girls Of The Sixties
Dietrich
Dorothy Squires
Dutiful Dogs & Cats
Edna (I)
Edna (II)
Elizabeth Taylor
Faith
Fernand Lumbruso
Footballers
Garbo
Gemini
George Formby & His Leading Ladies
Gracie Fields
Grandmother
Grange Farm
Gus
Guyarmathy
Hawking
Homophobes
In Ted Robledo’s Bed!
Jack
Jacqueline Danno
Joan Regan & Peggy Lee
Joey Stefano
Journalists
Manouche
Masturbation
Milletts
Misery At The Mason’s Arms
Mother
Mother-in-law
“Nancy Sphinctergritzel”
Nudists
O.B.
Paris & La Chanson
“Pauline”
Peter Sutcliffe
Piggy
“Pip”
Portugal & The Fado
Racists
Retribution Can Sometimes Be Such Fun!
Richard III/Roger Normand
Roma Robbers
Russians & “Vladimir”
Sacha Distel
Sapritch
School
Sexuality/Siblings
“Singing Star”
Sipping Schnapps With Gunther
Stepmother
Teeth
That Smiths Singer & The Queen Mother
Valentino & The Windy City
Wath-upon-Dearne
Wedding
Work Study Officer
York Street
Zeffirelli & Maria Callas
Acknowledgements
Foreword
I’ve been around. One benefit of my life is that I never settled down. To date there have been nineteen homes and aside from Grange Farm, where I lived twice, once I left a place I never returned. Thus those I left behind have not changed because I was never there to watch them grow old or leave this world. This made writing these memoirs that much easier, though I have had to think long and hard who or what I should include here, and who or what I should not. In the end I decided to write everything and be damned, and to change a few names here and there to save a few blushes—primarily my own.
I’ve had highs and lows, success, and thankfully and most gratefully in my professional life not that much failure. I’ve loved and lost, experienced joy and pain in equal measure, had friends and lovers who were ordinary men and women, and a few who were famous—if not bordering on the infamous. I’ve lived life to the full to make up for the miseries of my youth, but even then I grasped life with both hands to get me through the horrors of living with an abusive father.
Were it not for the adoration and my need to protect my mother from this man, I would have been dead years ago. I guess that makes me a survivor. When I love, I do so unconditionally, but I bear grudges and when I hate—which is not often, and only under extreme duress—it is with every fibre in my being, which I guess makes me a formidable enemy. Have I told the truth, from A to Z? Yes, I have! And would I do it all again, the good and the bad? You bet! Well, most of it!
David Bret
August 2016
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