A little bit more about me.
After my Dad passed away, Mam went to work full time in Kraft Foods, Kirkby working shift work, she became the bread winner,
I had left Roscommon St. school and started work in a manufacturing opticians in Duke St as an office jnr, it was awful and in the end my Mam pulled a few strings and I got a job in the Data Control office at Kraft, it was great, the money was good and I mixed well with girls of my own age and made some good friends.
Instead of staying in keeping my grieving Mam company, I wanted to be out there with my friends.
I felt my Mam was being unfair to me, after all it was the "swinging sixties" for goodness sake.
All through my childhood she had stopped me doing things in case I hurt myself, especially after I had Rheumatic Fever which left me with a heart murmur when I was twelve, (she was over compensating for her feelings of guilt at not wanting me), this would happen a lot through my younger life.
When I was eighteen I met a lad in the Peppermint Lounge, by Samson and Barlow,
He was very popular and was made up when he asked me for a date, we went out for a while, then I took him home to meet my Mam. He was Catholic and I was Protestant, in those day's maybe still, you didn't go out with someone who was not the same religion as you.
I lived off Netherfield Rd and he was from the Brownlow Hill area.
My Mam took an instant dislike to him not because of the religion but she could see he was very streetwise and I was certainly not.
I know "you just don't want me to be happy", "your'e to good for him love" was her reply.
It was 1966 and it was like family family at war.
I was feeling my feet and I liked it. it must have been awful for my Mam but I couldn't see it, didn't want to see it.
Wait till you have girls of your own then maybe you will think about what you put me through, so cocky was I " I'm not having kids"
John was my first boyfriend and in the Summer of Love 1967, I got pregnant!!!!
By this time I had wised up to John's drinking and if I hadn't got pregnant would have thought twice about getting married, but I made my bed so I had to lay in it.
We got married in St. Ambose's, Prince Edwin St. The flower power movement was in full swing.
My Mam took us in as we never had a penny to our name, and paid for the wedding.
That my friends was the start of the worst time in my life, I didn't want to be pregnant, I had a violent drunk as a husband life could get no worse, so I thought. WRONG.
More to follow... Part 2
