When I was a child, from about the age of six, I regularly received inappropriate Christmas or Birthday Presents from my dad - from my parents actually, but my dad was the one with the income, so I expect in his usual domineering way he took little notice of my mother's suggestions.
My friend Heather had told me she was expected to contribute half the cost of her own gifts herself; the gifts I received were fully bought for me, they were just gifts my father wanted me to have rather than gifts I asked for. Having to contribute to my own gifts might have made me more independent and resentful, and eventually propelled me out of home.
I was utterly uninterested in sport. So, on successive birthdays & Christmases my father gave me: boxing gloves and punch-ball; a fishing rod; a Manchester United kit; a tennis racket and ball; a cricket bat, ball (not a corky), wicket and bales.
I did - at 7 - once get a transistor radio which I was pleased with but I've only just now realised that though it was given to me it was actually a present for himself and my mother as it spent the rest of its life in the kitchen and living room being used by them.
My mother once told me that when I was three or four my father spent Christmas Eve scouring the Shops to find me the Cowboy outfit I'd asked for, but I can't remember.
I can remember only ever getting a present I'd actually asked for, which was a Johnny Seven One Man Army gun.
I asked for an Action Man when they first came out and got some british knock-off called Tommy Gunn (which I now think was actually better). I asked for a little telescope and never got it, I asked for a chemistry set and never got it, and I asked for a bike and never got it.
Looking back the telescope and bike were probably too expensive for my skint parents, but there was no moment when I was taken aside and told "we can't afford it, but we'll help you save up the half-crown your gran gives you every week and we'll put something toward it" , or when I was a bit older "we'll help you get a paper-round and you can save up for it", or even "we can't afford a telescope but we'll get you a big book on astronomy and take you to an observatory". It wasn't if I was passively sitting by, I saved money for a little book on astronomy, and borrowed books on the subject from the children's library.
So I got gifts from my Dad, but they were gifts for the boy he wanted me to be rather than the boy I was.
The boy I was was Frasier Crane, my father was a particularly unresponsive and unsupportive version of Marty Crane.
Or more accurately and british, particularly later, he was the cantankerous, manipulative, and negative Albert Steptoe and I was the aspirational and trapped Harold.
My uncle, my dad's brother, had more of an idea of who I was - when an acquaintance of his died, my uncle made sure that he secured the man's amateur artist equipment - oil paints, brushes, a portable easel, some cheap textured board - and he gave them all to me. He had his own child, but she was only seven or so at the time so they were age-inappropriate for her, but he could have saved them for her for a few years to see if she became interested. Instead, knowing that at the turn of my teens I was already interested in drawing and painting, he gave them to me.
My dad was an armchair sportsman who didn't even try to convey his interest in sport to me by sitting me down with him and watching football on TV together, but he expected me to become suddenly sporty because I had a cricket bat. My uncle was a fanatical Man City supporter and an amateur league referee, yet he could see I was a different type of boy and supported that boy.
I don't blame my dad for being disappointed that I wasn't a typical sporty boy, but he could have supported the boy I actually was. It wasn't as if I was a namby-pamby softy-Walter, I got into fights with other boys, I enjoyed rough-and-tumble, I likes boy's toys like guns and games such as playing Japs and Commandos, I just wasn't interested in any sport beyond having a kick-about in the street with my little mates now and then.
I don't know whether he didn't realise that I wasn't interested in sport, or whether he was ham-fistedly trying to make me be, but, whichever, it went on for many years and was if anything counter-productive..
It was such a shame - stuck out on a council overspill estate in the middle of nowhere there was next to nothing for a boy like me and a bit of parental involvement or support in my interests might have made a big difference. Even actively trying to enthuse me about - say - football might have made a difference.
It wasn't as if I was lost in a big family, I was an only child so my parents' attention should have been undivided and largely undistracted.
This was probably when I first started feeling isolated and ignored and a misfit.
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