Ian Shoesmith’s father was an alcoholic. He was a nice man, clever and loved his family. He’d fought in the war and the experience had left him scarred. Although he loved his wife and two sons and although for most of the time he would do anything for them, he couldn’t stop drinking. He had a good job and never had a day’s illness but he was normally late home from work and stunk of gin. Ian’s Mum was constantly throwing away the food she had made for her husband. A normal family meal consisted of the two boys, their mother and an empty place. In later years, Ian explored the difference between alcohol abuse and alcohol dependency. Alcohol abuse is the first step towards alcohol dependency which is another term for alcoholism. Ian decided that his father met some of the criteria for both terms. Alcohol abuse: failure to meet responsibilities (yes); drinking and driving (no); failure to complete responsibilities at home (yes) and work (no). Alcohol dependency or alcoholism: a strong craving for alcohol (no); an inability to limit drinking (yes); continued use despite repeated physical, psychological, or interpersonal problems (yes). That was good enough for Ian. His Dad was an alcoholic. When Ian, late one night aged seventeen, heard his father hitting his mother, he stormed out of his bedroom and asked what the fuck was going on? The next day, his mother told him that she had later found her husband with his head in the gas oven, trying to kill himself. This was the first and last time in his life that Ian directly confronted his parents about his father’s drinking problem. Later in his father’s life, he got his drinking under more control and the unreasonable behaviour stopped. For most of Ian’s childhood, the moments of horror were interspersed with lovely family holidays and quality time with his father playing football and cricket. It was a very confusing childhood: love and affection in abundance with the occasional moments when Ian couldn’t cope and barricaded himself behind a mental wall to protect himself. When his father died, Ian was aged forty five and he felt an overwhelming mixture of emotions; misery, relief, loss and anger. His childhood left him with three characteristics that were always to the forefront during his forty one years of teaching until his sudden death in 2017, aged 63. The first of these was a fear of being late and making other people wait for him. Although this meant he was rarely late to a lesson himself, perversely, when students were late, he wasn’t very good at dealing with them, preferring to block the incident behind that mental wall. The second characteristic was a fear of losing control. In Ashborough Sixth Form College, this wasn’t really an issue; students were, in the main, perfectly behaved. Ian was a good teacher, his students liked him and were grateful for the dedication he showed to helping them get the best possible exam results and subsequently the best possible start in life. However, when Ian had previously taught younger children, there had been many occasions when, faced with an unruly class or a contrary individual, Ian had lost his temper and had become genuinely angry. There had been the time when Stuart Donovan had come to a detention for being badly behaved in one of Ian’s lessons and had continued to smirk and sneer whilst Ian was attempting to reason with him. Suddenly, Ian lost his temper, started shouting and knocking off the chairs from the desks one by one as he advanced towards the obnoxious child. By the time all thirty five chairs had been smashed to the ground, four of his colleagues had gathered at his classroom door, peering in and too afraid and shocked to intervene. The final characteristic was a fear of upsetting people. Faced with making an unpopular decision, Ian would worry and he would worry a lot. It sometimes got very difficult for Ian trying to keep control of his classes without upsetting people. Invariably, when the moment of impending chaos in a classroom was imminent, he would raise his voice, severely upset the latest recalcitrant child and then worry about it for weeks afterwards, trying to find ways of regaining affection. So all his students ended up liking him but few really trusted him because they knew his need to keep control would eventually lead to an upset. In this way and for different reasons, Ian ended up like his old man. Of course, being punctual whilst keeping control and remaining popular were the three things that went wrong for Ian during the interview. That’s why the whole process left him desperately unhappy. The moment in Ian’s life that caused him most regret happened when he was ten years old. It caused him to feel guilty towards small innocent children for the rest of his life but on the overall balance sheet of life caused far more good than the initial harm he did. He had been invited round to a friend’s house, David Redfern, for the afternoon. This was quite a coup for Ian as David was a popular boy, extremely intelligent and articulate who later, as a Member of Parliament, was hugely influential in passing legislation to end the discrimination of gay people in the military. David Redfern’s parents were extremely middle class, part of the West London intelligentsia of the early sixties and appeared extremely pleased to meet Ian. On the Saturday afternoon when he arrived, David’s parents were hosting a party for a dozen of their friends. David had asked Ian to come and keep him company. After lemonade and scones (this was the mid Sixties), Ian and David went for a walk near David’s house. In later years, Ian couldn’t remember anything very much about what happened. He couldn’t remember where he was, what they were talking about, how he was feeling beforehand or anything except that suddenly, there was a small boy riding his bike carefully on the pavement. He wasn’t in the way, he wasn’t being unpleasant, he wasn’t doing anything to deserve unpleasantness but suddenly Ian shouted “boo” at him, very loudly. The boy looked very startled, fell off his bike and cut his knee. Ian had no idea why he did this; in later life he blamed his father which may have been a cop out or it may have been that having his own happiness spoilt by his father’s drinking and being unable to control that, he decided to victimise a small defenceless boy. In lots of ways, this was the action of a typical bully. David Redfern bent down to see if the boy was all right but he wasn’t really. His knee was cut, it hurt and he was crying. David and Ian brought the boy back to David’s parents’ party where all the adults were in the garden having a jolly and clever time. When the three lads came into the garden with the small boy still crying, all the conversation stopped immediately and everyone froze. The boy was called a brave little lad by David’s Mum who bandaged his knee and gave him a large portion of chocolate cake. David’s Dad drove him home while another adult wheeled the bike home. Neither the boy nor David told David’s parents what had really happened but they both kept giving Ian sideways glances as if to let him know that they knew what he was really like: someone rather unpleasant. Ian left shortly afterwards and although from that point on David was always polite and semi-friendly towards Ian, there was never any real closeness and at Secondary school, they drifted apart completely. Ian’s guilt was buried deep within himself for the rest of his life. He never told any other living soul about what had happened but sub-consciously he devoted the rest of his life to helping children and took a special interest in bringing on invisible children. A shame he never taught Sam Bennett. Encouraging and supporting quiet kids like Sam Bennett was exactly what Ian excelled at.
I only ever found out what happened by reading a document on Ian’s computer after his death which appeared to be the beginning of an autobiography but was never finished.
I only ever found out what happened by reading a document on Ian’s computer after his death which appeared to be the beginning of an autobiography but was never finished.