The Ballad of a Shattered, Laminated, Home

I remember living in one room dingy and dire with old lino on its rotting wooden floor. I remember crystallised spit dangling from guard at the fire; as mother cleaned, he'd only honk the more. I recall how we went hungry, waiting for the paltry sum he allowed us for board and keep, the cheap fink, and how he served apprenticeship to becoming a true bum by treating as priorities his fags and drink. I remember all the rows he caused demanding back the cash which was supposed to feed and clothe his we’ans I remember every Christmas morn' the gifts received were trash because he'd pissed the present-money down the drain. I recall one awful night my mother hunting high and low with a hungry bedraggled child on either hand, she finally catching that boozy stinker sate in the Dungloe. How he fumed, outraged that food she dared demand. I remember his begrudgement of those sparse few days away– one hour upon the beach or at the fair: how just when we were relaxing would be dragged from play. Homeward-bound: him the ‘bookies', us despair. I remember trudging up to Creggan to the ‘Housing Place' every week with mother and sister, come rain or hail, and how that worthless, selfish, monster did not even have the grace to commend her dedication, instead railed. I can picture his expression when she got herself a job, determined not to lose her new clean home. I remember his wild tantrums when she'd saved up for a hob– the delivery man was perplexed at oral foam. I remember those miserable times as if they were today, how he made odd help with homework living hell– so that now a friend's assistance, however gracefully put, grates my tortured psyche so much I cannot tell. When we started working, my sister dear and I, it seemed for him a licence to give less. Many weeks he'd keep house-money and, as the months went by, we discovered he'd drunk the rent; that was a mess. So now sot has retired, and it seems his mind has gone– for he's telling all how great he was those years: he built house on the prairie. He was such a con: the only thing he constructed was a legacy of fear.