We Did Our Best

The trouble with writing anything about Derek is that there exists an over riding period in our lives that overshadows all other bad times and good times that we had with him and taints our whole experience in raising him. I cannot think of anything worse that a child could possibly do to their parents. I do not know of anything that dishonours a mother and father as much as he dishonoured Kay and I. It borders on the unforgiveable and is so bad that i cannot bring myself to talk about it.
Genesis 9:20-25
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard
21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.
22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.
23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him,
25 he said “Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”
The worst of it all was we literally did not do anything wrong. We just acted like married couples do but had no choice in preventing what he did. It was terribble. The worst of it is that he walks around today with the sin of what he did hanging around his neck, and he is oblivious to it. To repent of anything, one of the requirements is reconciliation. Apolising for what you have done thus putting it right. Derek has never apologised for the atrocities of his actions towards us. He will go to his grave, unrepentant of what he did to us, or even knowing how severe it was. I will try and give an unbiased account of Derek outside of this monumental negative behaviour when he was 17/18.
Derek is our firstborn child. Of course, very much planned. I was married to Kay when I was 18. I was married on 19th January 1974 and on 3rd March 1975 Derek was born, 14 months later. It took just 5 months for her to get pregnant. In those days, the father was not allowed in the delivery room during labour. I was sat in the waiting room, all on my own, chain smoking Players No.6 cigarettes, and getting a running commentary on what was happening from a nurse that was tending to Kay. I will never forget the pride I felt when told that I had a perfectly healthy baby boy wieghing in at 5lb 10oz, and a healthy and exited wife. I could not get the coins into the telephone box quick enough to ring my mum and tell her that she was a grandmother, remembering that mobile phones did not exist back then. I walked out of that hospital, a proud father with a strong bond to my son, Derek, and a greater love, if possible, for my wife, Kay. Yes, of course, his name was to be Derek, after the traditions of Kay’s family and her forefathers. There was no question about it. That was the tradition. His second name was to be Joseph. Joseph was my Uncle Jupp from Germany and my brother-in-law Joe, Kay’s brother. No tradition there but nice to recognise both sides of the family.
Being new parents was wonderful opportunity for us. We knew nothing about it, but finding out was such fun and so rewarding. We made mistakes and had a job to put on nappies, no disposable nappies then all Terri nappies. Wè spent quite a while at my mothers and drew a lot on her experience, but we desperately needed a place of our own.
We bought a really nice Baileys caravan with leather bunks and cut glass mirrors. We sited it behind Kay’s sisters caravan on Ilton Camp. A really clean looking caravan that became our home. We had Derek and Donny by then and Kay had developed into a first-class mother and wife. Life was good for us, up until Derek was two years old. For one reason or another, we were suddenly evicted from that pitch, partly, it seemed, by the actions of Kay’s family and partly by the local council who were summoned in by Kay’s family. To this day, we have no idea what motivated them to take such action. The story is to long to tell her, but a full version of those events will appear in my book. The consequences of evicting us from that site. We ended up in our piece of heaven caravan in a wet dirt and gravel copse in the middle of the countryside that looked like a municipal refuge site. Surrounded by large, errie looking trees, it was aptly called the gravel pit. No toilets, no water supply, no lighting, so pitch black at night. A mile away from a main road, no electricity, plenty of shit and rubbish, and smelt bad. The other people who were there were like a misfits of the roughest people you would ever think of. The worst of it was that we were there by someone else’s malicious, underhanded dealings. Kay, myself, Derek (2 years old) and Donny (1 year old) in the most disgusting place that you would ever want to be, but we stuck it out. At that time, we were unaware of the actions that took place to get us off of Ilton Camp and into this hell hole.
Hell Hole Fire
It was winter and as cold ice ice outside. It had been raining on and off all night, so the roads were wet. I was driving a British racing green MG 1300 and had a couple of cars by our caravan in the Gravel Pit, one of them was a Austin Cambridge automatic that was nearly out of petrol. When we got back, it was, as it usually was, pitch black, dank and very cold. We took the children up to the caravan where it felt damp and cold, and the only lighting we had was the gas lighting and a torch that was low on battery. We needed to light a fire in the hearth, and the quicker the better, it was the only form of heating that we had. So Kay is sat at the horse shoe end of the caravan on a stool with Donny on her lap and Derek was sat by the bunk opposite the hearth and I was knelt down in front of the hearth building the fire. I had the paper in place on top of which was the kindling wood. I tried several times to light that damn fire, but it just would not catch. I think that the paper was damp so it would burn for a second or two and then go out. Kay and the two boys were getting colder and colder, and I was failing miserably to light them a fire. Remember, I was 21 years old at that time and very inexperienced in life, so i noticed an empty bake bean tin on the floor outside the trailer, among the other rubbish. So i took it to the Austin Cambridge, and using the half light of the torch, I syphoned about half an inch of petrol from the car. Without even considering the possibility that it might bluff I took it to the hearth and went to throw it on the paper and then light it, however, there must have been a smoldering piece of paper or kindling wood in the grate and it bluffed back at me in an instant. I saw the bluff shot to my right and hit Kay’s legs, burning the tights clean off her legs and then petter out. I saw another bluff go over my head, and when I turned to check Derek it had landed on top of his head and his whole head, from his neck upwards, was engulfed in yellow flames 2 foot above his head. He did not know what was happening, so he was frantically wiping the flames from his eyes. I can tell you that this is hard to write as I remember it vividly in my minds eye, and it was horrific. I actually thought he might die. When I turned to check on him, I saw a bath towel next to him on the bunk. As quick as I could I grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his head, and within seconds put out the flames. After doubting the flames, I looked down and saw that Derek’s hand was still on fire, so, with a corner of the towel, I put that out to. Kay had run out the caravan by now with Donny to try and get help. I then checked Derek out, and at that point, apart from the singed hair on his head, he looked fine, but his face looked sweaty.
Into our car I took him and raced the 15 miles to the A&E in Taunton hitting speeds of 80 mph in that car. Very quickly they assessed Derek. On his hand he had full thickness burns (3rd degree burns) and he had light to moderate burns on his face, the quickness in putting that out prevented a lot of potential damage, to his eyes, ears and his wind pipe. They put his hand in a polythene bag full of a white cream and put gauze on his face with cream on it. After they did all of that we were allowed in to see him. I could not believe my eyes. His face had swollen so bad you could barely see his nose and the skin was red and drying out. He looked frightening and unrecognisable. The had tied his hands to the side of his bed to stop him from scratching his face which would have caused scarring. The only way I knew it was him was that when I walked into the room he was stood up in the cot, with his hands tied to the sides, and said to me “Drink Daddy, Drink” I broke down and cried like a baby, my beautiful blond haired boy was in a real state and suffering, because it tried to warm my family in a copse where someone had caused us to be. I broke my heart that night and have never forgotten the details of that horrific night.
The next day, Derek was transfered to the burns unit at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol and stayed there for one month and three days. He has severe scarring on his hand and some on his face caused by scratching. We were blessed to have Kay’s brother living close by to Frenchay and he allowed us to stay there with his family for a week, which really helped us out. The worst thing then happened. On the day before Derek came out of hospital Donny pulled a cup of boiling hot coffee on himself whilst Kay was visiting with my mother’s friend. He was in Musgrove Park Hospital for three days so for one night Kay and I had no children with us. We did not sleep all night. It was terrible. One thing that took me many years to recognise, probably because I was directly involved rather than looking on. It was how instinctively I reacted to it all. Being presented with a situation where one of my children suddenly found themselves in a life threaten̈ing situation and reacting so instinctively to preserve his life and reduce the potential for greater damage to him. I did not think about it, I just did it. Now that child has not spoken to me for nearly 10 years without any real justification. Sadly, I am suspicious of why we were there in the gravel pit and why we had to leave Kay’s brothers home so quickly. It falls in line with my theory that far so many people make assumptions with absolutely no evidence and gradually turn it into their facts. I think that someone assumed that I did something that I did not do and turned it into their fact. I think that we were ejected from Ilton Camp in retaliation for something I am not responsible for. I believe that the consequence of that can be seen on the hand and face of Derek. One day that assumption will be revealed and that person will be filled with regret along with those who believed it when told. You can see why God said in Matthew 7:1-3
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
² For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
³ And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
I have no evidence for my conjecture, just a suspicion that the punishment fits a crime that never took place. An ASSUMPTION.
Derek fully recovered from that terrible ordeal, both physically and emotionally, and we moved on with his and our lives. We had two incidents after that where he fractured his arm whilst playing. He, like the rest, was a well-behaved boy who gave us very little trouble up until he was 16/17 years old. He helped us in the pea field and paid a nominal amount in keep when he got a part-time job, not that we needed his money but to show him how to handle his money. He was a clever boy at school and was popular. He loved sports, which was a bowl of contention as I didn’t. I think he might have wanted me to take a greater interest. We fell apart when he had his first girlfriend and have not reconciled our differences since. I dearly loved my children and did not want to share them with anyone, least of all a spoilt girls who dominated him. Like Elliott, he became obstinate and questioned my every decision. If we were going for a meal at The Harvester then he would make that he was going for a meal at Berni’s with his girlfriend, at the exact same time, so could not come with us. We had to pursued him to come to Christmas day dinner with us but even then he went to his girlfriends immediately the dinner was over. I used profane language in front of his son, once, accidently, and apologised immediately afterwards, but he was never alowed in our home on his own ever again. He gradually got worse and had little time for me. He thought i was a bad influence on his children. He once told me that he had been praying about movingaway from Bridgend anda that the spirit told him to move. Low and behold, he was told to move to the same town as Tiffaby’s parents had moved to. Coincidence, no, of course not, thàt is where the Lord wanted him, NOT. He made many descisions like thàt, but of course he did, he was not entitled to recieve revelation like that after what he did to his parents and not repenting for it. Steven’s hero was his brother Derek. He played with him all the time and Steven dotted on him, until Tiffany appeared on the scene and his litlle brother, Steven, lost his one time importance, which was never, ever reclaimed, to this day. That hurt Steven. The last time I saw him was the day he moved away and did not tell us he was moving or where he was moving, and to this day he has still not told us. He rarely came visiting us and seemed to do things intentionally to upset us, like not following the family tradition to name the eldest sonafter his dad. When he moved that day he blocked me on all social media sites, but worse then that, he convinced his children and Tiffany’s family to block me as well. He never told me anything about his children’s successes, including the fact that my grandson Luke had gone on a mission. He never answered any of my communications and must have told his children not to respond to my letters. I sent a lot of money to his children once and never received a thank you or any kind of acknowledgements from them. Did he pocket the money, I don’t know. He watches my post, of that I am sure. I once divulged a family secret on Facebook in temper, however, I removed it as fast as I put it up. Minutes later he had rung his mum to see if it were true. He will read this but in his juvenile attitude will not respond continuing to break the word of a Prophet and give me the silent treatment clearly deviced by Satan himself. To be honest, because of his callous and uncaring attitude I have very little time for him. He walks around with a plaque around his neck saying “unrepentant sinner” which exposes him to the wiles and wims of Satan removing his ability to love and honour those he has been commanded to love and honour. He has a smouldering fuse attached to his heart that will explode in time and loud will be that bang and wide spread damage will be his lot. I do not want that, it is inevitable. Look at his heart, there is nothing written on their. His stubbornness not to communicate with his parents is atrocious and bewildering. Only someone In alliance with Satan could maintain that. The damage he has done to his mother is quite unbelievable and he will have to pay for it. Sorry, this is very negative but I am thoroughly disappointed with him. I gave him life and then I saved his life and these are my rewards, Silence. Tiffany, his wife, must give explanation for supporting him in his silence. She is not an innocent party. God will one day ask her WHY? And she will be compelled to answer. We loved him, we fed him, we clothed him, we protected him from the evils of this world and gave him morals to live his life by, we educated him, we sealed him to us in the house of the Lord, the Temple under covenants given to us in the sealing room. We held him and comforted him when he was ill, I sat with him everything he had to go to hospital and was examined. I sat all night at his bedside when he was cruelly burnt and comforted him, I forgive him for all the disappointments he dished out to us, like telling his children that we had no Christmas presents for them because we did not like them instead of telling the truth, that he knew, and breaking a long standing family tradition blatantly. I had fun with him, fishing, tree climbing, rope swings, scrumping, scrambling, blowing up cow pats with bangers, river swimming, clubbing, snooker, tennis, cross country driving and many more. All things that I never had. They had a fun life and never went without. They went to bed tired and exhausted from having fun every summer. Satan snapped him up as soon as he had chance. I will one day tell the story of how his father-in-law turned into a demon right in front of Kay and my eyes. Undeniably. Derek latched onto that family like a leach to a lower limb. He is showing similar characteristics. Satan does that. He puts the threats to him winning the war against God with people who will stunt their growth and make them mute. All five of my wayward children have selected that kind of partner. If you take a cousery look at each spouse and then examine the changes they made in their partners, my children, anyone would deduce that is what happened to them. They have had the fight for God’s victory knocked out of them by their partners. Some more than others but still all the same. Deserters to the cause.
As with all of my children, Derek was an exemplary son, up until he met a girl, when he was 17, who was positively and explicitly a nut case, as was her fraudster of a mother. They are two of the biggest liars i have ever met. He ended up with one of Satan’s most subtle of unknowing followers who hides behind a smile and a hug. The daughter of someone I know is not who he betrays himself to be. The owner of a family island where only the invited can tread and an eccentric mother who sincerely believed in her husbands best intentions. I know this without a shadow of doubt, but they will label me as crazy. Sometimes, I can’t wait for all of this to be over so that I can say, “I told you so.” You see I do not know Derek. He is as artifical as a plastic doll with no heart who cries and wets herself when she cannot get her own way, but, like a doll, is incapable of empathy and compassion. Nothing that I can think of is as bad as the way in which he treated Kay and I, his parents, to whom he was to honour. I do not look forward to the judgement day where he will be compelled to answer for what he has done to us, his children and his wife. I do not relish the thought of looking upon the disappointment on his face when the light comes on exposing what he now knows was wrong, positively cruel and completely unjustified.
They all did well in their lives, they all presented themselves as well rounded individuals and they all made clandestine bad choices in life, never taking the gospel serious enough to benefit mankind and not just themselves. They gave up the ghost too easily.