My Hometown
and how the return of the prodigal son was a success despite the anxiety demons lurking on my shoulders
I’ve always had a fractious and strange relationship with my old hometown of Portsmouth, but perhaps the feeling I’ve constantly had of not fitting in, even in the confines of my own place of birth says more about me than the grand old city herself. The feeling of fitting in has always irritated me but being the contrarian that I am, I also carry this as a badge of honour as quixotically I don’t actually want or desire to fit in with anything or anybody. I can be a difficult human being to understand at times, equally pushing and pulling in opposite directions on the same topic, of wanting acceptance whilst also desiring autonomy, desiring love yet pushing away those closest to me, or of wanting my hometown to like the product that sprung forth into the world in 1972 whilst never fully appreciating her in return. So return I did, for the first time with enough free time to stretch my sea legs, see the sights I miss so much, breathe some sea air, visit loved family members and catch up with a number of lifelong friends whose friendships I value incredibly dearly. It was also the first time I had returned home in seven months and that was a flying visit to attend the cremation of my dear old Mother and I knew deep within my bones that returning to Portsmouth without seeing her would be an emotional wrench I never, ever wished to experience. But the central cog of my world was now firmly reunited with my Father and the two old lovebirds were now spreading their wings together again, as they always wished they could, and exploring the infinity of the unknown universe of the Great Beyond.
So, after a ridiculously anxiety and darkened mood few days of procrastinating over which hotel to stay in (or should I drive four hours, both ways, on the same day?), whether to announce my impending visit to friends (or whether to sneak in under the cover of darkness and not induce any further unwanted stress, duress or anxiety on my part for invading their time) of desperately wanting to see the seaside and open sea I so adore and miss so much (and fearing I’d never want to leave those sights again) and perhaps most importantly of all, of seeing loved family members for the first time since my Mother’s passing (and an incredibly painful on-going familial tragedy unfolding as we speak), I booked the hotel, told my friends I was coming and would really value seeing them again for a seaside stroll, arranged to see my sisters and despite the anxiety and depressive demons chattering away at me constantly, the brief trip home was a much needed, soul and spirit enhancing success.
I was born in 1972 to proud parents Maureen and Patrick and as my youngest sister takes great delight in reminding me I was the familial “mistake” (and how she enjoyed revelling in saying this time and time again just seven short days ago!). My Dad was 42 and Mum 37, which, in the vintage, black and white days of 1972 was considered quite the age to be bringing a new born child into the world. Stories abound of my Father, no doubt dressed in his trademark three piece suit and trilby style hat pacing up and down the corridors of St Mary’s Hospital with my middle sister, anxious for the latest arrival to the Blackford family and as family legend has it, was rather overjoyed to have sired a son after three daughters. But you see, growing up I always regarded myself as an only child, rather than the “mistake” as my youngest sister continues to jokingly chide me with. My earliest memories are of me alone with Mum and Dad, with these strange adult females interloping into our closed existence and clearly wondering why on earth they were coming and going so regularly? My three sisters all grew up together, in close age proximity and a full adult generation before the mistake arrived. But I also remember fondly being spoilt, not monetarily or materially, but with so much love and affection, and with so much pride and bloody minded determination from my Mum and Dad. I was indeed one of the lucky ones, with parents who spoilt and adored me and I they in return and so my Mother’s passing in February 2021, although long expected, hit me as hard and as bewilderingly as anything I’ve ever previously experienced. We were each other’s rock during the lockdown but since leaving my hometown in 1999 we would spend long bouts on the telephone just chattering away and raising the other’s spirit and the void left by her passing is quite the chasm. Every time the telephone rings I hope and pray that it’s my dear old Mum just wanting (and needing) a chat, and to pronounce words incorrectly in ways only she could(!) to bitch and moan(!) and occasionally laugh at the lamest of jokes I reserved only for her.
We lived in a suburb of Portsmouth called Landport and on the main street connecting the city centre and through to the famous dockyard in one direction and Fratton, Fratton Park (home to the continually underwhelming Portsmouth FC) and Southsea (seaside) in the opposite direction. And so here begins the good natured but fractious relationship with my hometown, as even though I greatly admire the dockyard and the famous history that seeps out of every pore of its lengthy existence, I never had the desire to follow my Dad’s footsteps into the navy. Walking along the lengthy promenade between Old Portsmouth and Eastney and looking out at the English Channel as I did for so long last week and have loved doing since a young child, you cannot mistake the large volume of boats/ships/cruisers/pleasure boaters/ferries and (in times of conflict) the vast array of warships that traverse in and out of the small Portsmouth harbour. But I never harboured (pun intended) a desire to join these ocean vessels. The child who used to spend his Sister’s 5 Peseta coins she returned with from Spain in the Arcades (they used to be the same size and shape as an English 5p so it was an easy con and I was a big spending youth in my early days at the seaside!) has grown into a curmudgeonly older man who seeks the simple pleasure of being on terra firma BUT with still that amazing view out to sea, the sound of crashing waves, the hustle and bustle of fellow humans enjoying the simple pleasure of being beside the seaside and away from the often cramped confines of a busy life in a crowded city.
I dabbled with being a Pompey fan and worked briefly for them in an unofficial capacity as a football coach in my college days but when your Manchester United supporting Mother buys you every imaginable piece of Liverpool FC paraphernalia when you’re a child (and there wasn’t much in the late 1970’s but I recall her buying me virtually everything possible), it’s an easy decision to become a devotee of the real Red faith and adopt Kenny Dalglish as my first and still only, footballing hero. So I wasn’t going to join the navy any time soon, nor was my footballing heart Pompey Blue and frankly I found the city herself (away from the seaside) stifling. It was always too busy, too crowded and more than a little frightening growing up where I did, sneaking in and out of poorly built, rundown council estates and then there was the local dialect or vernacular. Words such as “dinlo” (idiot) “mush” (mate/man) “chavvy” (young scallywag/young man) or “shant” (beer/drink) were used frequently but often meant absolutely nothing to me! Why use such words when the English dictionary is full of more eloquent alternatives? To this and for this, I thank my middle sister and her loving husband of nearly 40 years as they refused such colloquial and garish language and definitely reinforced my firm early beliefs that there was a world outside the boundaries of Portsdown Hill, a life away from Portsea Island (Portsmouth is a strangely shaped island of sorts) and had “dropped” their native city tongue and gently chided me into doing the same. So here I am today still befuddled when I hear the terms “dinlo” or “chav” and with an accent not of a native Pomponian. I have a Southern accent for sure and very definitely a manyana, manyana view of life and take great delight whenever someone tries to pinpoint where I was born and states with great certainty that I’m from Essex or Surrey or (as many have labelled me) a “Posh Cockney”. That never fails to tickle me!
But growing up I aspired to be like my middle sister and her sarcastic but soft at heart husband, and a man I always viewed as a guiding older brother. Together they have raised two children who are amazing individual human beings, soared the highs and lows of the Yuppie boom and bust of the 1980’s and continued to flourish when all around them have slowly failed. Never too busy, always available, they were my parents rock for everything and anything. I was naturally oblivious to all of this but not so in more recent times in the lead up to my Mother’s passing and nor in the 35 years in between this and my Father’s passing at the criminally young age of 56. I was 14 at that time and I can vividly recall the 18 months leading up to my Father’s last night on earth, too vividly if I’m honest, but I’ll spare you those nightmares for now and instead reinforce instead the vivid recollections of my sister and brother in law, never too busy, always available, who took me under their collective wings every Friday night after my Father’s passing and who showed me, in their own unique way, unbridled love and attention when this desperate teenager needed it most. Those 18 months/2 years between my Father’s cancer diagnosis and his untimely death were, albeit a horrific time period, also perhaps my most productive. Hormones threw me into a first love, I made the senior school football team (quite the feat against the backdrop of a 1,500+ boys only school) and I sang “Billy, don’t be a Hero!” throughout the trials, but let’s keep that secret just between us! Shush! And I was playing and holding my own in a men’s cricket league despite being a 12/13/14 year old aspiring colt boys cricketer who would, only three short years later, be invited to the County Ground in Southampton for trials for Hampshire. One of my few redeeming claims to fame. My Father’s death crushed me and still does. To not see that beaming bright light, cheeky grin and wink (always for me, no-one else, or so I like to believe) has forever shaped me into the human being I have become and I miss him daily. But in stepped my sister and brother in law to unselfishly help and guide me and it’s to them I made my visit recently my second port of call.
My first call was to a clump of rose bushes at the local crematorium and a chat with the departed, and now reunited, lovebirds. I updated them both on familial events, their grand and great grandchildren (whom my Mother adored beyond words), the stark, staring madness of our collective world and that my Mother’s football team were resurgent again and they’d re-signed one of her favourite all time players. I assured my Mother I was ok but the tears and sobs told another tale but she would’ve known my state of mind regardless of my reddening eyes. She was a wily old fox was my Mother, a misunderstood misanthrope and her apple fell very definitely onto my particular tree.
The morning visit to my sister and brother in law’s was both tense and full of acerbic jokes, the evening visit tenser still with incredible emotion surrounding the familiarity and desire to see the two people upon whom I aspired to be and to be the kind, thoughtful uncle to my niece and nephew rather than the mad, unhinged one they’re usually accustomed to seeing! Tis an old cliché but family is everything and I’ll be there for them all. It’s their tale to tell not mine so I won’t go into detail, aside from it broke my darkened heart to see them in such states of despair, angst and bewilderment.
Before departing the following day I managed to catch up with my other sisters in quite surreal circumstances. Talk of Mum was prevalent throughout as we’re all dealing with her departure in differing ways and that’s a perfect summation for us as a remaining family unit of brother and sisters. We all grew up so separately, me generationally different, all with different goals and aspirations and life choices. But here we were, a little thrown together perhaps and with very little in common and which perhaps is a signifier that it was always this way with our somewhat strange family and will be so forever more.
I’ll bring this seaside ramble to a conclusion with a tale of friends and friendships and I’ll start with a cautionary tale that many of us can perhaps relate to in so much as friends come and go but some remain so forever. I could name two Chris’, a Lee, a Gareth (a mad as a barking dog young man who turned me onto Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, Pink Floyd and The Stone Roses and of whom he flatly refused my rejection of them all on first listen with a simple “you HAVE to listen to them again” mantra), a Jason, a Danny and many more from my early Pompey days and friends have come and gone in my Telford years too, with only “Brother Andy” remaining, but lifelong friends are hard to come by and I feel blessed that I have a small but merry band and all but one (work commitments) accepted my slightly bizarre invitation for a stroll in the sunshine along a seafront they perhaps take for granted as they still live in my hometown.
Leri arrived first and after our always welcome long hugs the Welsh firebrand quickly became the chatterbox who never fails to make me smile. Matthew joined us and it was quickly established that along with my other friend who now lives outside his particular hometown and couldn’t join us for work commitment reasons shared a similar and annoying trait, that of not seemingly growing older and had a Benjamin Button approach to life as always. Matthew shares my Mother’s adoration for the football team at the wrong end of the East Lancs Road but I always forgive him for this as we’ve shared much between us since our early cricketing days and his laughter remains as infectious as ever. Adam and Jilly bought me my first alcoholic beverage (or should that be “Shant”?) for seven months and we quickly fell into the patter of old as we reminisced on chaotic New Years Eve’s at Adam’s parents and that his wife of 20 years used to copy my college homework way before they were even remotely a couple. Circles within circles eh? But it’s to Adam in particular and his lifelong friendship that remains particularly poignant as, without his or his family’s knowledge or perhaps their Pomponian modesty, that I will always be grateful for his comradeship. His family, along with his younger brother took me in at yet another difficult time in my life and opened the doors to their family and you cannot put a price on such warmth of generosity and human spirit. It’s the mark of the man, the mark of his wonderful family and the human willing of looking after one of their own. I’ve told him this many times and he awkwardly looks away bashfully and with a wave of the hand, but these things are important to me and a real important and defining factor of the human family that should never be overlooked and perhaps is in today’s disposable and ever quickening society.
Before departing for “home” I sat in the glorious South Coast sunshine with my oldest and dearest friend Marc. We met at Junior School and so have been friends for over 40 years and for over an hour we put the world to rights and reminisced of glory days past, of games of football with a rotten and bedraggled tennis ball in the dark, of “Millwall” (don’t ask!), Subbuteo, breaking his Dad’s revered sporting trophies and our trips to watch Liverpool when we were innocent and barely out of our teens. Marc, like Leri, Matthew (he hates being called Matthew, so I call him Matthew!), Steve, Adam and Jilly are one offs and I’m incredibly lucky and humbled to call them my friends. My lifelong friends. Way before my Father’s untimely death I was already an unofficial part of Marc’s family, welcomed without reservation and it’s another mark (Marc?) of the man that he attended my Mother’s funeral to show his respects to the grand old lady of Pompey who loved his presence and the influence he had on her son. Another family who took me in at my lowest ebb and when totally lost in the world when my Father died. I am truly blessed to have friends such as these.
So I left Marc’s to travel “home”. A home that 22 years on since leaving my hometown is still not my home and probably never will be. They talk even weirder up here than in Pompey! So I’m home, but not home, from a hometown that is my hometown, but one seemingly not my hometown, but one I miss dearly.
I will remain forever, a contrarian to the end!
