I made it to Sixty

I was born 24^th November 1959 and I will be 60 years old tomorrow.

I don’t feel old and I am told I do not look 60 but I digress, I was born in Leeds UK and my parents departed the home country and arrived in Melbourne Australia on the 23^rd of May 1965 which just happened to be my only sisters birthday.

I have outlived my Mum. Dad, Jesus, Princess Diana, Jimi Hendrix and many more celebs.

The only things I remember about the UK were living in a horseshoe housing estate and me shoveling snow from the neighbor’s pathways. I recall being at my Grandmas place in a kind of yellow safari suit and being in awe of the many rooms.

The sad part was leaving behind my favorite toy, a garage kind of building where cars would come and go, I remember being very upset.

The plane ride as I recall was a visit to the pilot cockpit and then my next memory is waking up in the Pennington Hostel a place where all immigrates ended up before being deployed to different parts of the country. We ended up in Elizabeth Field a suburb of Elizabeth a new City 40 km from Adelaide. There were many different immigrants who all got along very well unlike the immigrants of today. We all adapted into the Australian way of life; just going about our daily lives and as they say, living the dream.

My childhood is full of birthday parties where my mum made fairy cakes and our neighbor kids would come around and enjoy cordial and games of pass the parcel. Having six siblings meant a lot of birthday parties and although we were not well off, we were happy.

My mother was adorable and I have yet to find anyone who knew her have a bad word to say. Most people loved her Yorkshire puddings with gravy and her stews, which were always very tasty. As for my father; he was a different story. Raised in a convent due to WW2 he was a devoutly religious man who was totally consumed with the Catholic Church and its teachings which he enforced upon the family.

I embraced it for a while even becoming an altar boy, however, I started to question things and I was abruptly put in my place. So I joined the navy to get away from life in the Boddey household. In the navy at the age of 15 and a half, I found the real world and started to free thinking. I started to explore things that were different and out of step with my upbringing. For a short time I felt free and alive, alas it was short-lived.

I was medically discharged and sent back home where I struggled to fit in, at school nor at home life. I did put on a brave face and did the best I could. I worked at General Motor Holden thanks to a brother of mine and did very well until I decided to defect to the Nissan Motor Company in Victoria where I excelled.

I was married to my first wife at the time. She was a woman who gave us 2 beautiful children and who endured being left to looking after two kids while I was in Japan training to be a master supervisor. Unfortunately upon my return from Japan Nissan closed its Australian side and we returned home to South Australia. It went downhill from there. The reasons do not matter, other than to say they could have been handled better.

My second wife taught me a lot about sorting things out; however, my past and the things that had happened made things difficult. Unfortunately, I suffered a workplace injury that placed a strain on our relationship which eventually led to our parting of ways. Yes, there are differing viewpoints on the whys, the where for’s, etc of all my relationships but ultimately the truth lays with me and them.

So now I am sixty and have been married to my third wife for six years.

It hasn’t been the easiest of times as I had been bullied in 3 workplaces and have since been unable to work but we have worked together, shared our anxiety, panic attacks and depression experiences together growing as human beings and realising that there are a lot of fucked-up people in the world,

I digress, I am sixty and I am being told it is too salty, too sweet, too fatty, etc by doctors who are now concerned about my health. I am now, as my years of living are minimising being asked to stop enjoying life and become a health nut who is a fucking miserable because the bacon sandwich no longer is an acceptable sandwich.

I am sixty and if I am lucky I may have 20, 30 maybe 40 years left. For fucksake let me go out enjoying myself,

Author

Steve Boddey