Bernard's Story "Thursday's Child"
I was born on a Thursday and the old rhyme says: "Thursday's child has far to go." I've certainly gone a long way, geographically physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I know that I have a long journey still ahead of me and I am looking forward to the adventure because, these days, I know that it's the journey that counts not the destination. So, let's enjoy the trip.
I was born on 1st June 1939 in the small woolen mill and coal mining town of Batley in West Yorkshire. A few months after I was born World War II broke out but that wasn't my fault, honest!. My earliest memories are of the war. My dad was away fighting and my mother and I were living with my grandparents so I had two women looking after me. I guess that has made me dependant on women ever since but, what the Hell. We were working class and poor. My mother was a weaver in the woolen mills and my dad was a male nurse, neither very well paid occupations but I was never aware of being poor.
I had loving parents who provided all the necessities even though it was often a struggle for them. The street where I was brought up was exactly like Coronation Street on the longest running series on TV. There was a pub and co-operative store at the bottom, a mom-and-pop general store at the top and a higgledy-piggledy row of terrace houses in between. Everybody on the street knew everybody else back to his or her grandparents so I grew up in a very stable environment with a solid sense of identity. I had lots of friends and we used to go around in a gang. Not like today's gangs getting involved in crime but a group of raggedy-arsed kids exploring our world and getting up to innocent mischief.
I knew at an early age that I was smarter than most of the kids in the gang, not in any sort of bigheaded way, just as a fact of life. So there was nothing in my background that was dysfunctional, nor was I in any way deprived so I can't blame my alcoholism on that. I guess it's just a gift from God. Talking of God, I had a spiritual side to me from an early age. Neither of my parents were churchgoers, though my mother converted to Catholicism a few years before she died; somewhat at my instigation. So it was not influence from my parents but my own volition that led me to church. I used to enjoy going. In fact I went three times on Sunday, to morning service, Sunday school and evensong. My parents and neighbours were convinced that I was going to be an Anglican minister. Boy, were they wrong!
Poverty meant I had to leave school at 16 and start work. I gravitated to my local newspaper at age 18 and have been in journalism and related fields ever since. With work came regular drinking. At 16, and big, for my age, I could pass for 18, the legal age for drinking, I could go into pubs with my older workmates with no questions asked. After all, it was the manly thing to do wasn't it? And anyway, all the social life was centred round the pub and drinking. It has been that way for centuries ever since my Saxon and Viking ancestors, who settled the valley, had built their beer halls. I liked the effect booze had on me from the start. It did away with those feelings of shyness and inadequacy that had plagued me through childhood and which had become more pronounced with the onset of adolescence. A couple of pints of beer and I was Jack the Lad, walking two-feet off the ground and feeling no pain. Of course the discovery of liquor and lasses at the same time, plus the fact that I was starting to question what the church taught, meant my Sundays were spent somewhat differently.
Apart from a few youthful indiscretions I got into no serious trouble through drinking. I had my first blackout at Christmas when I was 18 through mixing gin with beer. To this day I can't remember what I did. I was at a party and am told I was paying very eloquent court to an older girl who I relieved of her virginity a few weeks later. I wish I could remember the lines I used. Like most British youths of that day I was called up for two years' National Service and was posted with the army to Cyprus. There I got into my first trouble through drink, causing a riot one night in the NAAFI (the British equivalent of the PX) and spending the weekend in the Black Watch guardhouse. But God looks after drunks and I got off with a warning and a posting to Malta.
After National Service I returned to local newspapers in Yorkshire and continued drinking. I was frequently drunk, but then, so were most of the guys I associated with, so no one noticed. Due to sheer dumb luck I did not get into any trouble through drinking. National Service had infected me with the travel bug and the year after I was released from the army I got a job with the Ministry of Defence Public Relations and was sent to Malacca in Malaya. That was an exciting three years, travelling all over Southeast Asia, covering the Brunei rebellion and eventually fetching up in Kuching in Sarawak. Again I was with a hard-drinking crowd of soldiers and rubber planters so my capacity for drink went unnoticed and again, through luck, I did not get into any trouble.
While in Kuching I met a charming Chinese girl and we started a relationship. Just before my tour was due to end she told me she was pregnant. In the irresponsible frame of mine, which I then was, all I could think of was getting out of the situation. With my gift of gab and through sheer lying, I managed to leave for England with her carrying my child back in Asia. However, when I got back to England and she told me I had a son, some spark of decency rose through the fumes of alcohol and I decided to face my responsibilities and marry her. That was not easy, as I was in England without a job and she was in Singapore, where she had gone to have the baby and avoid small-town scandal. But I landed a job with the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Adelaide and after a bit of a tussle with the Australian authorities was able to have her join me and we got married. One of the best things I ever did. We'll have been married 34 years next month.
I was posted by the ABC to New Guinea and spent two years there. It was a wild and woolly place, still is, and drinking was a favourite occupation, so I fitted right in. Although I liked New Guinea I was home sick for the Far East and managed to get a job as Assistant Editor on the Borneo Bulletin in Brunei. I was to spend seven years in Brunei. It was a really interesting job. I got to cover weddings of the royal family, including the Sultan's brother, was the only passenger in a helicopter piloted by the Sultan and his brother and met and talked to the Queen of England when she visited there. Great on the surface. But, Brunei is a small place with very little to do and the drinking really started to take hold. In a place like that you are thrown on your own resources and, truth to tell, I did not have many. My life was going to Hell and I didn't know why. I was still drinking but not enjoying it and not getting the buzz from it that I used to. But I had to keep drinking. It was easy then. Brunei, being so rich has no tax so booze was cheap and again, the expatriate crowd there were big drinkers. Even the Attorney General, a Welshman, was practicing alcoholic and used to have to be scraped up off the floor after binges. But the rest of the community covered up for him and he was good at his job so the drinking was tolerated.
I got drunk one day at the port, 17 miles from my home and tried to drive home. I must have had a black out because I woke up in a green tunnel. I had run the car off the road and into the jungle, which had acted as a natural brake. The green tunnel was the headlights shining through the undergrowth. No injuries and little damage to the car. But I could just as well have killed someone. That did not stop me drinking. After all, my despair wasn't my fault or the drink's fault was it? No! It was because I was in a God-forsaken place like Brunei where my undoubted talents were not given a chance to shine. If only I could get away things would be better. Well, I did get away. I was working as PR Officer with the Brunei Government at the time. I was not sacked but my contract was not renewed and I decided it was time to return to UK. There I was with no job, and a wife and two kids. But I still managed to find the money for booze.
After a few months I got a very good job with the BBC World Service. Many journalists would give their left testicle for a job like that. But was I grateful? Not me. Again my genius was not being recognised but fortunately Bush House, the World Service HQ had a bar downstairs and if I was on night shift, which was frequent, we knew a pub that stayed open all night to cater for the butchers at Smithfield Meat Market. I was desperately unhappy but did not know why. I thought it was homesickness for the Far East, which was partly true. After all it couldn't be me or the booze could it?
After two years in England I got a job with Radio Television Hong Kong. Again a job a lot of people would kill for. But again, I was not grateful. Blamed the job, night shifts, my wife, anything for my unhappiness, and was sneaking small bottles of Scotch in my pocket to get me through a night shift. Not happy so change jobs. I transferred to the Hong Kong Government Information Service and was posted to Police Public Relations as editor of OffBeat, the force newspaper. A great job again, but one I did not appreciate at the time. One good thing about it was that it enabled me to tour the police units around Hong Kong and visit the officers' messes where booze was cheap. Around this time, despite the boozing, I took up jogging and joined the Adventist Hospital Marathon Clinic that met every Sunday morning. The idea was to prevent heart disease. Eight months later I was ready to run my first Marathon - 26.2 miles. The night before I was nervous and thought a beer would settle my nerves. A few six packs later I woke up with a hangover. I ran that first Marathon in 4 hours and 10 seconds and let me tell you, running 26 miles sure as Hell cures a hangover. Exercise has been a big part of my recovery programme ever since.
After the Marathon I no longer had the discipline of a training programme and went on what was to be my last bender. At a Chinese New Year party Police PR gave for local journalists I had my last blackout. I woke up in bed at home with no idea when or how I had left the party and gotten home. For some reason I decided this was enough and I had to stop drinking. Don't know why as I was in no particular trouble. Two days later I was out training with the Marathon Clinic and found myself running with Dr. John. We all knew Dr. John was in AA because he made no secret of it. As we were jogging along I said: "John I want to stop drinking." He asked me if I meant it and I said "yes". He invited me to an AA meeting the next day. I went but I can't remember much about it even though I hadn't had a drink for 72 hours. I decided to sit and listen and certainly wasn't going to say I was an alcoholic just to be part of the group. The next morning, and this is how I KNOW God has a sense of humour, I was sitting on the toilet stark naked about 6 a.m. when the thought struck me like a bright light in my head: "You are an alcoholic!!!" Suddenly everything seemed to fall into place. I just knew, not in my head, but deep in my heart, that this was the answer. Since then I have never had the compulsion to drink. That was over 19 years ago.
My life began to improve in ways I would never have thought possible. I met a former colleague from Radio Hong Kong a few months later. She said: "Bernard, you've changed." I said I had lost weight, which I had. She said: "No, your whole persona has changed." Hell I did not know I had a persona. Of course everything did not get better straight away. I was, and still am, an addictive personality. I became addicted to exercise, which was no bad thing. I also became addicted to sex. For years I had thought (still do to tell the truth) that I was not attractive to women. They seemed attracted to my new persona, especially many of the many lonely and lovely Filipina girls working in Hong Kong. I went on a sex binge, juggling a marriage and as many as four girlfriends at one time. That can be a bit wearing, on the body and the nerves. It did not do my marriage a lot of good when my wife found out about one affair. But fortunately it survived. I realise now that it was all caused by my low self-esteem. I thought I could prove myself attractive by sleeping with many different women. But it does not work that way. One woman is too much, a thousand not enough. I am still very attracted to women and, at 61, I still get offers, not all of which I turn down. But I still suffer from low self-esteem, especially when it comes to women. Go figure!.
After 20 years with the Hong Kong Government I reached 60, the retirement age. I decided to leave Hong Kong and have set up a PR, publishing and marketing business in Kuching my wife's home town in Sarawak. My two sons aged 34 and 27 are partners with me in the business. It is a great source of pride to me that people often remark that my sons and I are not like father and sons but more like brothers. We are a very close family. I suppose to most people going off to the wilds of Borneo and starting a new life and a new business at age 60 is a bit daring and something of a risky adventure. To me, it seems quite normal, thanks to the confidence that AA has given me. Hell, we are even on the point of starting a whole new company in the field of financial information and are quite excited about it.
Coming to Kuching meant being a loner, after having daily meetings on my doorstep for 19 years. People have remarked that they do not think they could go to a country where there are no meetings. But, without going into boring detail, there were several pointers that made me think Harold wanted me to come here. (You know Harold! "Our Father which art in Heaven, Harold be thy name.") I may be being grandiose but I really believe that I was meant to be here to help set up AA and give something back. It's been a slow process. Besides setting up the business I have given talks on AA to the local specialist medical centre, the local university, Rotary, Toastmasters and have appeared as guest on an hour-long radio programme hosted by a local doctor. So far not one local drunk have I met. But, two Americans in the programme have been posted here to help set up a huge silicon wafer factory. So now we have meetings. But I won't be satisfied till we have some locals coming along to meetings. But, hey, it's not about my satisfaction; it's about Harold's plans. Funnily enough the speech I gave to the local university, which GSO New York posted on the Net, and a piece I wrote for GSO Australia/Pacific have given me more contacts than my speeches locally and I am in e-mail correspondence with people all over the world.
So, here I am, an English Buddhist married to a Chinese Roman Catholic (we AAs believe in keeping it simple) living in the wilds of Borneo trying to get AA started along with two businesses. But I would not have it any other way. When I came into the Programme someone told me: "Bernard hang on to your arse because it's going to be a Hell of a trip." Well, he was right. I'm still hanging on, my arse hasn't fallen off and by God I'm enjoying the ride.