My childhood was a disaster. There was many a slip twixt the cup and the split lip. The days passed slowly and sometimes not at all. Father knew best, although the worst was yet to come. It was a disarranged marriage made in hell.

As soon as I learned to walk upright I regretted it, as there was no going back. True love had fled with the lodger, leaving us to survive alone. Only time remained to brutalize us with its heavy stick. The house was a museum that contained relics of a civilization long past.

The years came quickly now, but not quick enough to escape the humdrum existence that lay over this family like fine dust. Better to have never lived than to have wallowed in the swamp of tedium. And the television gazed at us like god at his minions.

It all faded to gray one afternoon when cats coughed and the radio crackled like birds on the roof. The curtains were drawn on the future and men forgot themselves. We got ourselves into another fine mess, playing around the edges of sanity with a certainty that life would be eternal. If only.