I sit upon the Tube train carrying me back to the airport and wonder from where the outburst of the previous evening came... I said, "one word from you and they do as they like..."Yes, it was a criticism but not meant harshly, but one borne from watching over so many years as my younger sister battles with her kids who do not listen or obey until she feels she cannot keep on and on and on at them, and she gives up, and they have won. And they know it. And they tell her.
She being much younger than me, won't remember the way our bullying father disciplined his young family with his hand and not his words. She being a girl wasn't hit.
Our sister was not either, but I being the older and a boy received his pent up violence in the only way he knew; him having spent six years, but some years earlier, in the most violent world imaginable. His Victorian father probably did the same.
And having said those words I let open the torrent of self doubt... and they still do as they like.
