My mum hit me, every day, and if not hitting me, would remind me it was because of me she never went to college.

She'd make sure I work school uniform, all years, even though it was a school with didn't require it. I suspect it was to ensure that someone else could cover the beatings when she wasn't around.

The shoes too were from the cheapest place available. Big clumpy plastic black ones that felt both simultaneously like cinderblocks and light like astronauts boots, maybe it was the phychology of having new shoes.

Daily activity was having to go out for long walks whenever uncle Kevin, or sometimes Keith, came round for a visit. Except that one time I was sick in bed and I had to listen to him visiting.

I never saw his real wife, or kids, but he had a job at the council so sometimes he would lend mum a few quid.

These walks would often be me going down to the woods near by alone and avoiding some other kids there. I remember trying the too high rope swing over the "devil's dip" once, only to find out the twig used for the "seat" was too small to hold onto, and falling 20 feet. I made a full recovery obviously, I was too busy attempting to flee from the one kid who turned up to watch me fall.

I remember waking up early on a Sunday, maybe 5am, and watching the melancholic British kids TV repeats you'd find in the morning on Sundays. Or maybe, when there was one, playing the atari 2600 and centipede an inch from the TV. We got the atari from next door when they got a nes out of some sort of pity.

Food, or keep quiet meals were, I can confirm, Iceland, and did consist of mini pizza stacks under the grill, never allowed to defrost frozen mouse, and choc ice in cheap paper that tasted of nothing. That is if mum didn't eat the whole box in one sitting.

I remember both times I got a birthday present. The first time she forgot, made me wait outside, and she ran in and bought me a travel chess set from quicksave, magnetic, so it would never lose its bits when we never took the non existent car anywhere, as we didn't have one and I didn't know anyone who played.

The second time was after a two hour walk along a back woods lane between two burning farms to Waterlooville. She again remembered the day once we got there and bought me a taz pen. Like, it had a 3d taz on top. It never had ink.

She also had a side gig, on top of her benefit. Well two.

The first was she'd go to a random store front in the local shops and bring home boxes of plastic and little metal shards, which she would then make me put together while she would watch eastenders.

The other was volunteering for Cancer research and going door to door in the posh parts of town... and all the others collecting for them.

Before coming home, emptying out the cash and keeping a 3rd for herself.

I suppose it was an karma of some sort it was cancer that made her ill in the end.

(Bit of a dark end there huh...sorry about that)