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lunes, 28 de enero de 2019

por sus injurias a la esposa de Franco. Carta a Paul Preston, un muerto de hambre inglés con visos de pseudo historiador al que jalean todos los palmeros del Sionismo visceral


2 de octubre de 2001
CARTA A PAUL PRESTON.
 
Por Antonio Parra
Amigo Paúl, te escribo a cuenta de tu libro sobre las mujeres españolas que participaron en nuestra guerra civil: la mujer de Onésimo Redondo, la Pasionaria y otras cuantas más. Todo está muy en totum revolutum, las churras con las merinas, halcones y palomas, y aprovechando que el Pisuerga pasa por Valladolid, donde a ti te mandaron de becario de intercambio por el gobierno al colegio de irlandeses, ciudad de las que volviste diciendo pestes y metiendote con los cazurros de Delibes, pues entras a sangre y fuego contra Carmen Polo de Franco, una ovetense de pro, que tendría sus defectos como todo mortal, porque ya sabes aquello de “quien no perdona sus defectos no ama a los humanos” o “ni yantar sin desperdicio ni hombre sin vicio”, pero que fue mujer de gran corazón, afable y sencilla, esposa de un militar. Una verdadera señora de Oviedo. Como doña Jimena, doña Urraca la Asturiana o doña Gonterodo. Como mi mujer, como alguna de mis novias.
Incurres en un defecto imperdonable a un historiador objetivo la saña, la vesania, el empecinado rememorar desde el desmelenamiento del vencido.
Merezcante, hombre, respeto los muertos. Además te metes con las mujeres por lo que incurrirías en algo muy corriente a la sazón en el acoso. Un acosador te llamarían aunque claro está en tu caso no tendría el sentido que se le suele dar, pero te expones en este país, donde no se permite a maltratar verbal o físicamente a las mujeres, a que algún hidalgo te rompa la cara. Por atentar contra el honor de alguien que no se encuentra entre los vivos y no se puede defender de tus especiosos y contumeliosos veredictos que descubren tu violencia y tu impotencia contra España. Una y otra vez insistes machaconamente desde tus delirantes entregas, pues no se podrá calificar de libros a tanta carnaza con refritos de medias verdades, morcillas que no vienen a cuento y otras butifarras, en el mono tema. Más de lo mismo. Parece que sangras por la herida. Joder ¿qué te pasa?


Me acuerdo de un Paul Preston al que yo di clases de pronunciación y conversación castellana en el Marist College de Hull curso 1966 con un acento cerrado de Liverpool que pugnaba por ganar una plaza en Oxford.   Era un pelitaheño de cabellos rizosos en melena leonina, muchas pecas, la pupila verde y algo de ectropión que se movía con andares de teddy boy, menos partidario de los Beatles que de los Rolling Stones y que en español, a pesar de que el director del centro me había encomiado su alto nivel, estaba pez. Si eres tú el Paul Preston de Liverpool al que yo traté de entusiasmar con la lengua y la cultura de Cervantes, tengo que decir que como estudiante pertenecías sino al pelotón de los torpes, al menos a los del montón. Para más inri, eras  gamberro a morir con alevosía y provocación. Hasta en una lección me soltaste sin venir a cuento de que Valladolid era un burdel, un inmenso cuartel y un enorme convento. Que todos los españoles eramos maricas, las chicas todas putas y que los únicos machos los había metido Franco en un campo de concentración. Traté de aparejarte a razones pero no hubo manera. La cabra tiraba al monte, fui incapaz de hacer gavilla de ti. No así de otro que se llamaba Sean, un irlandés, que consiguió el A level con proficiency lo que equivale a matricula de honor  “In Spanish”.
No te me despintas. Tú no puedes ser otro que aquel Paul Preston que hablaba con aquella voz cavernosa de los barrios del puerto de Liverpool. Era la misma dicción que la de Paul Mac Cartney, Ringo Star y John Lennon. Al igual que ellos tú tuviste que pulirte en la universidad aquel pelo de la dehesa y conseguir el inglés melifluo de la Bibisi. El mismo que viste y calza.
Tengo que decir que este sí que es mi Paúl. No me lo cambiaron. Vuelves por donde solías. Haciendo el burro. Diciendo paridas contumaz y procaz hasta que te cansas pero sin pensamiento original pues eres uno de esos escritores que hablan por cartapacio. Piquitos de piñón y boca de ganso repitiendo aquello que oyen o recogen sus antenas. Volviendo a los lugares comunes y los manidos tópicos de la “Collares”, la “Franca”, la “cabeza de chorlito con menos inteligencia que un ratón” etc.
Sin demostrar que ni una sola vez echase la mano al cajón como hace ahora tanta gente ni incurriendo en los cohechos y peculados ahora tan habituales. Ni a ella ni a su marido les habéis podido coger en un solo renuncio de un afer secreto o un hijo entenado o extramatrimonial  los porno cronistas que no historiadores, los jornal/listos, retrateros mirones, la tribu cursi de la prensa sural, cotillas del con quién se acuesta ésa y con quién se levanta la otra, que no periodistas oportunistas de la revancha. A moro muerto gran lanzada. Desde luego, pero eso no tiene poco mérito. Os han dado una chifla, y todos capadores. Lo fácil es aullar con el lobo, lo difícil es enfrentarse a la muta. Y vosotros más que muta sois jauría que arrasa con más ahínco que las manadas de gochus que bajan a estos valles desde la Cerceda y la Rondiella o el Picu la Puerca con los recios plenilunio de enero hozando como rayones detrás del morueco. No quedará títere con cabeza ni quintana ni corral que no se abrasen acusando los destrozos de vuestros colmillos envenenados.
“Yo siempre estuve reservada para Paco”, afirmaba en una de las escasas entrevistas que concedió por su cuenta  ya fallecido el Caudillo. No le gustaban los protagonismos y fue la mujer de un soldado, su sombra fiel, desde que se conocieron en un baile por San Mateo del año 17 recién incorporado Francisco Franco al Regimiento del Príncipe - venía convaleciente de una bala que casi le perfora el hígado en Tiduf- hasta el 20 de noviembre de 1975.


Sin ningún altibajo. Juntos del principio al fin.
A doña Carmen Polo Martínez Valdés, digan lo que quieran las lenguas viperinas, tanto en el Pardo como la Calle Uría siempre se la conoció por el cognomen de la “señora”. Con esto está dicho todo: la elegancia, la casta, el linaje de una asturianía apacible y bondosa sin otras pretensiones que las del concepto del deber y la vocación de servicio a España. Era aquella eterna sonrisa con que aparece retratada el día de su boda saliendo de la iglesia de San Juan en 1923 y con la que acompaña a su marido a los actos oficiales nunca en primer plano.
La ceremonia tuvo que ser aplazada en dos ocasiones (“Carmencita bien puede esperar; España no”) la primera cuando tuvo que salir zumbando para ayudar a Millán Astray a organizar los cuadros de la Legión con mehalas marroquíes y voluntarios internacionales y la segunda cuando lo de Annual en 1921. Ya se sabe lo que decía Mola “la bala que te ha de matar no la sentirás venir, pero todas ellas, como las cartas tienen un matasellos, una fecha y un destinatario, hay que abrir el correo”.
Con el laconismo que le caracterizaba aquel discreto oficial gallego, pequeño y de infantería, cuando recibe el telegrama ordenando rápida incorporación al Ejército de Tareas del Rif bajo las ordenes de Sanjurjo, que le saca de su “Oviedín”,  no disimula su sorna “Otra vez a torear”.
Y parte raudo a presentar batalla contra Abdel Krim.   
Las personas que se quieren llegan a parecerse físicamente.  El roce hace el cariño y Franco y su mujer, si no enamorados y acaramelados a la tontuna, debieron de sentir un amor profundo el uno por el otro. Se parecían en la sonrisa. Nunca lo dejó solo. Incluso durante las operaciones bélicas lo acompañaba de un frente a otro.  Hicieron la guerra en una rulot.
Creo haber oído decir a un periodista, José María Zugazaga, que perteneció a la Casa de Su Excelencia, que Franco el humor que le gustaba no era tanto el gallego como el de la calle Uría. Llevaba a Asturias en el corazón. Quería profundamente a esta región donde fue feliz donde estudió a conciencia. Por eso venía a pescar aguas arriba del Narcea todos los años.
En una ocasión le preguntaron cuáles habían sido los mejores soldados de su escuadra y dio la siguiente réplica: “La guerra me la ganaron los gallegos y los moros; los navarros echaron el resto, ninguna tropa más segura que la de los castellanos, pero los más valientes no te quepa la menor duda, José Mari, los asturianos. Los de Simancas y los del Cerco de Oviedo”.
Cerca de Oviedo se sentía radiante y hasta recuperaba la buena forma física. Allí nació su única hija Mari Carmen a la que llamaba “mi nenuca” y la “morucha” por ser muy morena. Hay una entrevista que concede a Life en  abril de 1937 en la finca de los Polo en San Cucufate de Llanera.


Allí se muestra al matrimonio Franco como un paradigma de armonía conyugal. Carmen y Paco sonríen sin parar y por allí anda la “Morucha” que aparece escalando un manzano de la frondosa pumarada. Y este artículo ganó la guerra para la causa nacional. El general se metió a los americanos en un puño - he ahí la fuerza de los medios de la imagen - sacando a relucir sus encantos de seductor en los primeros años. Oviedo era el sitio donde regresaba al cabo de las campañas africanas a lamerse sus heridas, el descanso del guerrero. La ciudad lo transformaba.
Parece ser que se impregnó de esa bonhomía del asturiano de buen carácter a veces irónico y teñido de orbayus y borrinas, exponente de civilidad. Ni muy pobre ni muy rico. Sólo quería una vida decente, un buen pasar. Aura mediócritas bajo las torres caladas de la catedral de Vetusta. Al tiempo que una espiritualidad profunda. Los golpes que  más le dolieron fueron los que le dio la Iglesia de los obispos trabucaires como Mr. Añoveros que quiso excomulgarlo y en 1948 cuando ONU decreta la expulsión de España de la comunidad internacional merced al veto de Israel. Precisamente, a él que tanto había hecho por Israel y que tantos judíos salvara, a él que dio instrucciones al embajador Sanz Briz para que concediera pasaporte español a todos los sefardíes de Salónica. El propio Ben Gurión cruzó los Pirineos en valija diplomática dentro del portamaletas de un coche.
Esos son zonas oscuras de la biografía de Franco poco esclarecidas o silenciadas a propio intento. Como por ejemplo sus relaciones con Inglaterra que visita sólo una vez con motivo de las exequias en Londres del rey Jorge V pero al cual admiraba por su pragmatismo y buenos modales, justo lo que a ti te falta, Paul Preston.
Era un anglófilo dentro de un orden. No tanto como Julián Marías. Pero le gustaba tomar el te de las cinco con su señora y rodeado de sus hijos y de sus nietos. No le gustaba demasiado la política y leía a autores ingleses Woodhouse, Agatha Christie, Chesterton y al plomo de Azorín. Siempre dentro de unos niveles discretos de modestia confortable.
Nunca consiguió aprender inglés aunque hizo lo que pudo por reanudar aquella clase particular interrumpida en Tenerife el 14 de julio de 1936 por causa mayor. Sin embargo la figura de Franco hay que analizarla bajo la influencia británica. El movimiento se fraguó en Londres mediante los dineros del banquero Juan March y al socaire de otras trastiendas internacionales. No era él el general designado en principio sino Emilio Mola Vidal. Luego se alzó “Franquito” con el mando único. ¿Por qué? Nadie supo explicarlo.
Quedan por aclarar y por patentar los correos De Philby el gran maestro del espionaje del Circus londinense, las mañas del embajador  Lord Templewood o Sir Samuel O´Hara en Madrid y las del Marques de Santa Cruz en Londres.


Los británicos sois algo anecdóticos y periféricos al abordar un hecho tan complejo como es el de aquel estallido que fue un ensayo general para algo más gordo. A chip on your shoulder como soléis decir.
Con semejante petulancia que nos mira por encima del hombre y que bajo cuerda revela una carencia y uno de vuestros muchos complejos de inferioridad nos habéis estado vendiendo “guerra civil” contadas por vosotros y nos despachasteis libros como roscas alcanzando tiradas millonarias que os han situado en el poder y la gloria. A ti me consta que el “Spain bashing” labróte todo un capital a ti, tío.
Cito a Hugh Thomas, Brian Crozier, Elliot, Ian Gibson y a ti mismo, habéis encontrado una mina mientras que aquí muchos andamos lampando. Esto tiene que ver con el papanatismo de nuestras clases pudientes con su flexibilidad de vertebras ante todo lo inglés.
Nos habéis colocado la burra y, soberbios traficantes, nos la habéis vendido bien. El “English teaching” es una industria y una picaresca en la Piel de Toro que mueve cifras de diez dígitos. Para colmo, ostentáis la exclusiva de nuestra historia reciente.
A pesar de todo algunos no podéis esconder al hooligan que lleváis dentro. Al “teddy boy” de aquellos años saltados a la fama desde sitios como Hull o Liverpool que son el culo del mundo.
Vuestra interpretación de la historia es freudiana. Todo un gran problema de bragueta. En los libros hay que echarle más testosterona que en la guerra y algunas novelas hay que escribirlas con el clítoris como hacen no pocas novelistas inglesas que remedan algunas de las pánfilas nacionales que montean por nuestros periódicos y que de una navaja en la liga han pasado a ser rosas insatisfechas.
“Please no sex. We are British” era el titulo de una comedia de los setenta.  Sin embargo aquí como se ha perdido el pudor el mundo gira en torno a los tamaños, las pesas y las medidas. Tengo entendido que la honra no la llevan los hombres y mujeres en las partes menos nobles de su fisiología sino en la mente y en la corazón. Y Carmen Polo de Franco Martínez Valdés era una asturiana de pro mujer de honor como lo era su esposo, el de Dar Akoba y Acila, el del Gurugú. No se explica cómo sobrevivió a aquel tiro mortal de necesidad que le perforó el vientre. Tampoco sé si tal percance influyó en su capacidad reproductora aunque dudo que afectase para nada a su higiene sexual.


De lo que sí estoy seguro es que los cojones, como piensas tú o la Fallaci, y nada se diga de doña Magdalena Albright, la que bombardeó Belgrado la noche de Pascua y que no sabía decir otra cosa en español, a question of balls, no los llevemos los hombres donde los animales. Cuelgan de otra parte.  Tanta obsesión fálica es subliminal síntoma de vuestra impotencia. Sois flojos. Y Franco tuvo un par de pelotas. Eso decían los moros de la cabilas mirandolo como a un dios que tenía lo que hay que tener y “baraka”. Muchos le adoraban  como si fuera un profeta. Y también los tuvo en abundancia para hacer feliz a aquella mujer, a la asturiana. ¡Ya quisieran muchos!       
 2 de octubre de 2001
ANTONIO PARRA, periodista y escritor.
 
 

domingo, 27 de enero de 2019


REFLEXIONES SOBRE FRANCISCO DE SALES

Es mi patrón, el santo popular de todos los plumillas que nos hemos pasado la vida dándole a la tecla, mi cabeza echa humo a día de hoy, suplico santo Francisco tu intercesión, dame coraje, me cuesta tragarme la píldora de tu máxima de vale más una gota de miel que cien cántaros de vinagre" con los que convertisteis a los herejes. Hoy es otra época aunque pueden que hayan vuelto los mismos perros con otros collares. Yo no me rindo al recordar aquellas meditaciones salesianas de mi adolescencia a los pies de María Auxiliadora.
Sus biógrafos lo describen alto, fuerte con la cabeza poderosa y la frente bien formada cabellos rubios ojos castaños. Hoy el mundo es un océano de hiel y san Francisco nadó en él venciendo a las borrascas y aplastando la cabeza de la serpiente. Al maligno se le combate con la pluma pero hay que hacerle frente sin acobardarse. La candidez de la paloma y la prudencia de la culebra fueron sus métodos de combate como estrategia y eso sí la pluma siempre en ristre. "Cuando encontréis dificultades no perdáis el tiempo en romperlas, dad un rodeo". Todo lo contrario de los tomistas medievales pero Sales es un santo para la modernidad Era suave y condescendiente sólo aparentemente haciendo el bueno el dicho latino de "suaviter in modo fortiter in re". Estudió en la Sorbona. Allí conoció a Richelieu y a san Vicente de Paúl. Escribe "Introducción a la vida devota". Su ascetismo trata de llevar el cristianismo a las pequeñas cosas de cada día y eso implica renunciación, abnegación, sacrificio. Ya obispo de Ginebra publica Tratado de Amor de Dios en un lenguaje claro y sabroso que sabrían comprender las gentes sencillas. Quiere ser guía de los contemplativos a la moderna y en sus libros y millares de cartas se muestra como la antitesis del jansenismo de Port Royal tan arduo tan tenebroso y difícil. Escribir siempre escribir porque escribir es amar y disentir. "Ridendo castigo mores". Por eso a san Francisco de Sales le hemos hecho los periodistas nuestro santo tutelar

sábado, 26 de enero de 2019

Литургия с пояснением Святых Отцов.

Литургия. Проскомидия. Часть 1

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oficio parvo de la virgen para el sabado AkazistósGebet An Die Gottesmutter. Über die Heilung.Der russische Gesang


PARALOGISMOS
Inundados vivimos
de paralogismos razonamientos en falso
de índices y repertorios
el niño muerto ocupó media hora
de telediario
televisaban futbol en tiempos de Franco
Sorites
Epiqueremas
Silogismos
Ergotistas dinámicos
ya paren las mulas dicen
y se quedan tan pancho
Iba un cura vestido de balandrán
El padre Fortea
Ese capellán de Alcalá feo y bisojo como un diablo
Exorcista endemoniado
Daba voces profería insultos y anatemas en la red
Contra el Venezolano
Matad a Maduro
En nombre de Cristo
¿Eso lo manda Dios?
Si es esto caridad
Que baje Xto y lo vea
Y expulse del templo a los cambistas clerigalla trabucaire contra el quinto mandamiento
Poltrones sibaritas depravados
a sueldo del Gran Prevaricador
Símbolo cifra y compendio
Medida y compás
De los engaños
Que nos cercan
No os toque ese cura vive Dios
Que os meterá en el cuerpo
Mil diablos
Fortea lávate en la Probática
di el munda cor meum
Que enjuague tus culpas
No prediques más por la Red
Ni lleves a más almas al infierno
Epifonema satánico
Mal andan las cosas por el Vaticano
Ya en nuestra iglesia
No quedan sabios
Ni santos
Sólo lobos
Redil de psicópatas
Aprisco de chacales con piel de cordero
Quieren llenar de sangre
Las pilas de agua bendita

erifos dios malvado

'The smell of booze was part of the fabric of my childhood': the hidden victims of alcoholism

What’s it like to grow up the child of an alcoholic? One writer looks back at her teenage years, and talks to others about fear, shame and survival
 Bindy Galsinh
 Bindy Galsinh. Photograph: Sophia Spring for the Guardian
George Clarke asked his father not to text him when he went on holiday to Valencia in September 2015; he didn’t want his father to be charged the extra fees. When Clarke, 25, landed back in the UK a week later, he headed straight to the restaurant where he worked as a waiter. His boss told him that one of his father’s neighbours had called while he was away – she was concerned about his father. Clarke had had messages like this before, and figuring his father was on one of his regular drinking binges, ignored her message. But two weeks later, the same neighbour called again. Clarke drove to his father’s flat, two miles from where he lived in Holmfirth, Yorkshire. No lights were on, and no one answered. He looked through a window and saw a loaf of bread on the kitchen counter that had turned blue and was surrounded by flies. He called the police.
“The next thing I knew, there was this big, 6ft 8in man covered in tattoos outside the flat with one of those battering rams they use in drug raids, trying to smash the door down,” Clarke says. “I had a chuckle to myself, as the whole moment was quite slapstick, and my dad would have laughed, watching these officers trying to knock his old wooden door down.” Once inside, the police found Clarke’s father upstairs. A postmortem later revealed he had been dead for three weeks.
Clarke has been grappling with that day since. “I get a heaviness in my chest when I talk about this,” he says. His parents divorced when he was 13; as a teenager, Clarke would visit his father two or three times a week with his two younger brothers, and spend the rest of his time with his mother. He remembers a time his father drove them to school, when Clarke was 15. “Looking back, I realise he was absolutely out of it. He was in a jovial mood, singing at the top of his lungs. And as a child I didn’t realise it was abnormal. The smell of alcohol was normal to me. It became part of the fabric of my childhood.”
Clarke would find bottles of alcohol hidden around the house; in the cereal cupboard, or the washing basket. He became estranged from his father when he stopped coming to his rugby matches, and missed his graduation from Newcastle University. “Everyone was there with their family. And I bought him a ticket and offered him a drive up, and he said he’d come, and then he went silent for a week,” he says. His father’s behaviour has affected his relationships. “You put your faith in someone,” he says, “but if you’re not sure that faith is 100% well placed, you get hurt over and over again. There’s a cynic in me that thinks, well my dad lied to me, so why shouldn’t someone else?”
***
Many children of alcoholics now have a dead parent, whether or not alcoholism is explicitly referenced on the death certificate. Alcoholism has long been recognised as a deadly disease, but there is far less awareness of its hidden victims: the children of alcoholics. A 2017 study by the University of Sheffield found that more than 200,000 children across England live with an alcoholic parent; other research has put the number of people in the UK affected by a parent’s problem drinking at 2.6 million.
I grew up in a home affected by alcoholism. My father, whom I never knew, suffered from alcoholism all his life. My parents divorced by the time I was six, and my mother raised me and my seven siblings alone. But she also battled with depression and alcoholism, and it swallowed much of the joy from her life. She died when I was 16.
Like many children of alcoholics, I tried to reason with my mother in an effort to stop her drinking. But when you’re 13, the last thing you want to be doing is begging a parent to stop hiding bottles of wine down the side of the bed, or spending your time persuading them that their life is, in fact, worth living.
Children grow used to an alcoholic’s many contradictions. My mother was a fiercely intelligent, empathetic person, who went from nursing in a mental hospital to completing a politics degree at the age of 40. I would love to inherit her good qualities, but I also don’t want to end up like the person she was at her weakest; when she had truly fallen victim to alcohol.
Children who were raised by an alcoholic parent share a bond; we are part of a club we never signed up to. My older sister thought that if people knew about our parents’ illness, our family would appear broken or dysfunctional. This went for me and some of my other siblings, too. For decades, we hid the true extent of our childhood experiences from others, because we just wanted to be “normal”.
Instead we have tried to live the best lives we can as adults, and supported each other. I am the third youngest, and my older siblings bore the brunt of my mother’s illness, shielding the rest of us. While he was at university, my older brother spoke to my mother on the phone every night and tried to talk her out of a depressive spiral. When she died, my older sister Mary, who was 22 at the time, became legal guardian to me, my younger sister and brother, who were 13 and 15. We might otherwise have been separated and put into care.
Today, some of my siblings drink, and some of them don’t. I enjoy social drinking. Since children of alcoholics are far more likely to become alcoholics themselves, I sometimes wonder how much our parents’ illnesses were hereditary, and whether we’re ever fully in control. While I’m confident I won’t develop a problem with alcohol, I have a solid support system around me, of good friends and family. But I’m not so sure things would have turned out this way without them.
Over the past year, there has been an increased focus on helping children of alcoholics. In April last year, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Department for Work and Pensions, jointly announced £6m of funding. The plans include fast access to children’s mental health services, and programmes to treat parents’ addiction. The funding will also speed up the identification of children who are at risk, in the hope of reducing the numbers being taken into care. Stigma and shame have prevented many children from talking about the repercussions on their own health and wellbeing, but according to the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), psychiatric problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and bulimia are common.
I wanted to speak to others who grew up like me; to hear their stories, their coping mechanisms, and understand how they got through it.
***
As one of the few people of colour in a very white area of Sunderland, Bindy Galsinh tells me she often felt isolated, forced to grapple with her father’s alcoholism alone. “It felt like my brothers and I were the only brown people in the north-east of England at the time. And there was massive stigma in our [Sikh] community. All of my aunts and uncles knew about his problem, because when they’d visit us they’d see him drunk. But all of my family, even my grandmas, would act like: ‘That’s the way it is, keep it hush-hush.’”
George Clarke
Pinterest
 George Clarke. Photograph: Sophia Spring for the Guardian
When Galsinh’s father was drunk, he was aggressive and unpredictable. “He’d stay up and watch television all night. I remember when I was 10, I woke up to go to the toilet and was so scared of making any noise in the bathroom that I grabbed a pint glass, weed in it, and poured it down the sink.”
Galsinh was diagnosed with PTSD in her 20s. She suffers from flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety and depression. She compares growing up with an alcoholic parent to living in “a war zone”, because you never know what is coming. “We don’t develop like other people. We didn’t grow up with safety around us.” She feared being defined by her father’s alcoholism in the eyes of friends or family. “It’s the look that says, ‘There must be something wrong with you, because he wouldn’t drink this much.’ It’s worse than shame.”
Today, if Galsinh goes out, she has a drink. She chose not to be teetotal because she wants to prove she has control over alcohol, and does so with the support of friends. “To some weird degree, I drink because I want to feel closer to what he went through. I need to understand. You want to feel power over it.”
Galsinh’s father died in 2013. She says she feels guilty for not grieving for him. “I was grieving for myself. That I could have been more if I had the support. I was grieving for the fact I didn’t deserve any of that.” She has few happy memories of her father, she says, although, “He was the cleverest person I’ve ever met. If anything was broken he could fix it.”
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My earliest memories of alcoholism being discussed in public life are in relation to the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy. To me, he seemed a committed politician, and as a 13-year-old who marched in protests against the Iraq war, I admired his stance on the issue. But his alcoholism was treated as a joke by the press and many of his peers, even after he stepped down from the leadership. On the comedy panel show Have I Got News For You, Jeremy Clarkson introduced Kennedy by saying: “On Paul Merton’s team tonight is a man who, after confessing to a drinking problem, reported that four party officials cornered him in his private office – although later it transpired that there were only two of them – Charles Kennedy!” In June 2015, Kennedy died after suffering a major haemorrhage caused by ongoing alcohol abuse.
Labour MP Jon Ashworth
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 Labour MP Jon Ashworth, who has spoken in the Commons about his alcoholic father. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Thankfully, times have changed. When Labour MP Jon Ashworth stood up in the Commons in 2017 to talk about his alcoholic father, the video of his speech went viral, and he was widely applauded for its honesty. Ashworth described how the shame his father felt about his alcoholism seeped into all areas of his life. “One of the most heartbreaking things for me was when I got married and my father felt he couldn’t come to the wedding because he would be so drunk. He felt there would be well-known politicians there, and my dad, from a working-class background, felt if he was there, drunk, he would embarrass me.” His father died in 2011.
On a grey morning, I meet Ashworth in his office at Westminster’s Portcullis House. He is welcoming and warm, and as we sit by his desk, he speaks passionately about the need for better services to treat alcoholism, and to protect NHS services. Though his voice softens when he recalls his childhood, he doesn’t shy away from the reality of his experience. “For too long, it’s been very difficult to talk about alcoholism,” he says. “People worry about speaking out because alcohol is such a huge part of our society, and nobody wants to be a killjoy. It’s almost as if it’s the final taboo.”
Ashworth, along with a cross-bench group of MPs, is leading an effort to tackle alcoholism and to better support the children of alcoholics. Almost all local authorities have seen cuts to drug and alcohol services that specifically support children, with a total of £8.3m slashed by 70 councils in 2017. Between 2015 and 2021, 95 local authorities are reducing their alcohol treatment and prevention budgets by £6.5m. Though the £6m in funding promised last April won’t make up the shortfall, Ashworth has praised it as a “real breakthrough”. The cash will be shared with charities and child helplines.
The All-Party Group for Children of Alcoholics is chaired by another Labour MP, Liam Byrne, also the son of an alcoholic. Its research has found that more than one in three deaths or serious injuries caused by neglect or abuse of a child are linked to parental drinking. Ashworth says his father was never physically abusive, but he still feels the shame that many children of alcoholics experience, even as adults. “By talking about my father, it’s as if I’m somehow betraying the memory of him, because I’m talking about his problems. People would say to me, ‘Isn’t he a great laugh, because he’s always drunk?’ We all like people who can be the life and soul of a party. But what happens at the end of it, when the band stops playing and the curtains are drawn and everyone goes, and it’s just me and him left alone in the house?”
Kate Jones
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 Kate Jones says the years of managing her father’s alcoholism caused her to develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. Photograph: Sophia Spring for the Guardian
Alcoholism is often portrayed as a problem isolated to poorer families, but Ashworth notes that alcoholics can often be high-functioning and hold down demanding jobs. “If you’re living in a chaotic household, the system is looking out for you. But there’s a whole cohort of children who will never get spotted because, on the outside, their parents are holding down respectable, middle-class jobs. My family was a working-class one – but even from the outside, no one would necessarily know there was a problem.”
Children of alcoholics are forced to grow up quickly, he says, and his mission is to let children of alcoholics know they’re not alone. “It doesn’t mean you can’t go on to do what you want in life. I have always wanted to be an MP and I achieved it.” He pauses. “Maybe that’s because I had to grow up quickly. And I want others to know they don’t need to suffer in silence.”
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Kate Jones has her own set of rules for drinking alcohol: she doesn’t drink when she’s alone, before lunchtime, or when she’s sad. And she doesn’t drink to get drunk. “But sometimes I break them,” she says, laughing.
Jones grew up in a council home in Pill, a village just outside Bristol, with her parents and two younger brothers. Her father had a job as a forklift driver that involved shift work, but when he was signed off work with depression, her mother took on multiple jobs to support the family. Jones’s parents divorced when she was 18, and her father’s alcoholism led to his death in 2012. He often attempted to stop drinking, which led to fits and hallucinations. When he died, he had been sober for around two weeks; Jones thinks his body just wasn’t used to it.
Before his alcoholism developed, Jones’s father would take her and her two brothers on family walks on Sunday afternoons. They’d take camping equipment, cook hotdogs and go fishing. “We’d walk through an abandoned railway, and he’d always say there was a ghost in the tunnel. In the middle of the tunnel, there was a big dip, and when it would rain, he’d hoick my five-year-old brother on to his shoulders and wade through the water to the other side.”
By the time Jones was 14, she would wake for school and find him drinking a can of cider at 8am in the kitchen. When he was drunk, he wouldn’t eat with the family, preferring to sit alone in the living room. The smallest thing would push him to drink, she says. “Once he shouted and swore at me for singing along to an advert, and so he went to the shop and bought beer. And I thought to myself, ‘I did that, I made him go to the shop, I should be better next time.’”
Jones says the years of managing her father’s alcoholism caused her to develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. She was petrified of receiving a call from her mother telling her that he had died. “Every time I saw an ambulance go past my school, I knew it was for my dad. And it always was. I was on constant alert.” She used to count the times he was hospitalised as a result of his alcoholism. By the 11th time she stopped.
One of Jones’s last memories of her father is when she was 21 and he was rushed into hospital on life support. “I stood at the end of his bed in intensive care and I didn’t know what to do. I just burst into tears. The nurse came and said, ‘If his heart stops, we can’t resuscitate him, because his body can’t take it.’ I didn’t feel like an adult then, I felt like a child. I thought, OK, what do I do now – do I stay or go? I sat by his bed. The hospital smell still makes me think of my dad.”
Rossalyn Warren (second right, behind her sister) with her siblings and mother.
 Rossalyn Warren (second right, behind her sister) with her siblings and mother. Photograph: Courtesy of Rossalyn Warren
Only recently have I started to ask my siblings about our mother, wondering what it would be like if she were still alive. I wish I could have had parents at my graduation; that they could be there at Christmas, or for the birth of grandchildren.
But the truth is, I have an airbrushed version of my mother in my head. If she were alive today, her illness would still have control over her life. As much as I would like my parents to see the person I’ve become, I would still be grappling with the consequences of their addiction.
I’m 29 now, and it’s taken me more than 15 years to speak about my mother’s alcoholism. I no longer feel the intense pang of fear in my chest that I might be pitied or shamed. And I no longer believe that speaking about my mother’s alcoholism will tarnish her memory; her illness doesn’t negate the fact she was a good person and loving mother.
Children of alcoholics are more than simply survivors of our parents’ illnesses; alcoholics should not be defined by that illness, either. But alcoholism is a part of who we are, and to ignore that, as we have in this country for so long, would be a disservice to other people grappling with the illness today. In many ways, the taboo is as dangerous as the disease. It’s time to let it go.
 National Association for Children of Alcoholics: nacoa.org.uk, 0800 358 3456.
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