some things you have feelings for if you even if don’t know why:

I hate blue Volkswagens

the reason for this not coming to me until I was mid twenties being offered one for sale & wanting to throw up, had to run away fast breathless & sick to my bones.

my girl of that time all concerned asking wtf was all that about?

& the memory came back, an aunt in my family home playing with my sister & me, a blue bug pulling up outside.

a lady coming in telling us she was to take us to our new home & I did not want to leave in case my mother might come back, I’d be two or three not knowing then that was never going to happen.

dragged screaming & kicking into the blue volks, my sister on the backseat, me on the front seat strapped in to stop me running.

before long I was in the footwell crying & kicking feeling I was losing everything all over again.

the young social worker (I guess) being frightened of me in case she lost control of the car, taking hours to reach ‘Kilrie’ the children’s home.

where I was separated from my sister-there being a boys & girls wing of the house.

lost for days & days crying for my sister until they reunited us in the day times.

I was in the baby nursery for a while until I was placed with the older boys learning to fight very quickly or be just another punch bag for those higher up the boys hierarchy.

it was a cold dark place, regimented & an institution for life for some. this was where I guess I learned my fear or is it distrust of institutions.

my sister tells me it was run by nuns, I remember nurses who hated all of us, never being shy of giving sly slaps or punches.

my father visited once.

my mother never.

she might have given up on me but I never gave up on her, always hoping that she’d return.

then one day he came & took us back home, little was I to know this was out of one hell & into another.

having spent some time working in & with social workers, I understand she had a job to do & was thinking she was offering a better future for us.

she like us was not to know.

©neil benbow