The Galumphy Rottweiler, The Troubled Bed-Wetter, & The Hot Red Chopper

When I was nine, my parents went on holiday for a few weeks by themselves, and I was shipped off to the Seckie family.

- Jonathan Ancer

Mrs Seckie was one of my mother’s friends. Although I’m now reflecting through a 30-something-year time fog, I have vivid memories of that time – possibly because they were some of the bleakest days of my life.

The first evening of my Seckie stay fell on Mr Seckie’s birthday. Mark, one of the Seckie children and a few years older than me, had made his father a card, and signed it: “From Mark Seckie”.

“Oh,” said Mark’s sister, “like Dad wouldn’t know which Mark this card was from?”

I roared with laughter – but laughing at Mark Seckie let loose the bully in him, and I would come to rue my spontaneous guffaw.

Another telling memory is the Seckie Sister asking me why I was so sad. “Are you homesick?” she asked. “No,” I shot back smartly, “I’m Seckie sick.”

But I was lying, and Sister Seckie was right: I was desperately homesick. It was the first time I’d been away from my parents; and while this family I had been billeted with were good people – well, except for Mark, perhaps – they were undeniably alien to me.

My homesickness was probably magnified because I was in the midst of an existential crisis: a friend’s father had died suddenly, and the idea of death and dying had left me deeply traumatised. My nine-year-old brain couldn’t cope with the notion of not existing anymore. The thought that my father or mother could die at any moment was a terror that gripped me; and no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t shake it.