Bags to Bitches to Botox to Banned: The Autobiography of – Bruce Gareth

By Bruce Gareth

Bruce Gareth was a boy with determination. He managed to emerge from a poor family background to become one of todays leading aesthetic injectors, a real rags-to-riches story. He points out that, with a little knowledge, life can become so much easier and more fruitful, especially when one incorporates a sense of humour in lifes challenges. Also, meeting interesting characters adds extra flavour to an exciting life. Savoury incidents he couldnt believe, to enjoying and watching revenge being served cold

This book exposes Gareths adventures in all aspects of life, and even provides insight into how men think about sex and women. He touches on the world of plastic surgery and explains the art of injectables. He exposes some of the practices of Harley Street and its surgeons. And he explains how life can come crashing in on you, when only you know the terrible secrets why.

Anything written by the author is subject to scrutiny of the Royal Courts of Justice of the United Kingdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496995230

Book preview

Prologue

Today is a reflective day – 9 April 2012. A similar book to this one has caused a legal precedent. An injunction has been placed upon it by a bankrupt individual. If any material about this person is included that could be deemed damaging, then they are to be committed to prison.

I am sitting and wondering how to tell you about my life. Why? Because I believe that I have had an interesting time whilst living and surviving the trials and tribulations of my sixty years of existence.

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My father and mother met at a local dance hall in Grachester; he worked at the shipyard, and she, at the local food-processing factory. They married at St Patrick’s church, but soon had to move to England, as my father was a non-practising Catholic, and my mother, a Protestant, which was seen as treachery to the Catholic faith at the time. My father, born in Nudery on the Irish border, had been physically abused by the priests and nuns and therefore resented this hypocritical religion. He never mentioned his parents; I therefore believe there was a rift between them. He also had a sister who lived in America whom he despised. My mother, the second of the four quarrelling siblings, still, in her daily life, lived under the influence of the seeded remnants of her faith; but having lived through the death and destruction of the Second World War, she lost the urge to practise her religion, as simply surviving was deemed to be more important. My father lost hope with the Irish way of life because, on returning to the shipyard after the war, he had to state his religion as part of his employment, which still goes on today, and it was a well-known fact that the Catholics were given the worst and lowest-paid jobs. Having just fought for six years in the Royal Navy on board the warship cruiser HMS Norfolk, where he was wounded twice for king and country, he expected to see a fairer system for all and an unprejudiced Northern Ireland.

They immigrated to Kingsfield, England, where they were accepted as normal human beings.

No wonder the troubles in Ireland were approaching; the country was on another religious collision course. It all started in 1657 when Oliver Cromwell massacred 500,000 Catholics, a quarter of the population. Then in 1930 the Royal Irish Police and Army drove into the football ground in Dublin and shot eleven innocent spectators. Then we have the results of Bloody Sunday in which the Paras (Parachute Regiment) opened fire on the public. These incidents were all spread out over historical time, of course.

Chapter 1

Kingsfield Born and Bred

M y first memories date back some fifty-eight years to 1954 when my family lived in a little black, bitumen-covered hut on the edge of a disused airfield called Skellingthorpe, a couple of miles south-west of Kingsfield. There were several huts adjoining the semicircular billet huts, again black, with a few air raid shelters on the perimeter, all encircled by pinewoods. I remember wandering among those trees picking toadstools – you know, the pretty red ones with white dots on them. They looked very tasty, but I had been well educated with loud, verbal instructions from my mother not to eat the spotty ones.

My mother was a hard-working labourer. She used to take me to the local farm with her friends where she would pick potatoes all day for a small wage. I remember I was left on the moving tractor with a small girl (Leslie Johnson) whilst the earth-turner chopped and exposed the tatties (spuds) behind. Health and Safety was not even considered back then, but what fun, with the farmer managing to run to the tractor just in time to reverse it down the length of the field again.

Our first home at Skellingthorpe, Kingsfield.

When I was four years old, we moved to Nocton Drive on the Council Ermine Estate.

The following year we had some great news – we were all being relocated to some newly built council houses on the Ermine Estate, number 53 Nocton Drive, and this would be my home for the next fourteen years. I remember arriving at this new house thinking how lucky we were to be moving to this palace, as it was so much nicer than our last residence. Now we were in a semi-detached house and had front and rear gardens to play in. Several other families from the airfield, the Bustins and the Johnsons, also moved in. We socialised with our neighbours on one side, the Moles; however, we ignored the neighbours on the other side, the Crofts. I believe the mother was of mixed race, and my parents were a little bigoted, but the father of this family was always a miserable moaner.

We made and lost more friends as people moved to and from the estate, and when I was taken to school at the age of five, I was traumatised. I was scared of the teachers and the regime, but soon realized that mixing with other children was fun. My father taught me the alphabet one night whilst I was under pressure from a junior teacher who would be testing us the following day. Because of his help, I remembered every letter and was saved from embarrassment. I remember my mother teaching me the time, taking me to school, and providing my evening meals. Mashed potatoes with butter and pieces of spring onion, called ‘champ’, were my favourite but also the cheapest.

My parents were both smokers, and I hated the habit. When I was seven, my mother bought me a toy pipe with a gargoyle face carved into the bowl. That evening my father decided to place his full-strength Capstan cigarette in the end, and he told me to inhale. I gave a gentle suck and blew it out straight away with brave confidence. They both smiled and said, ‘No, breathe it down.’ Upon ingesting the fumes into my lungs, I turned green and was violently sick, to the laughing delight of my parents. You have to remember they were extremely conditioned, even by their doctors, that smoking was good for you and would even cure many ailments and prevent all kinds of malicious diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. As you can imagine, because of this experience, I have never smoked. That was probably the best form of conditioning I could have asked for, as my lungs have given me strength for my many adventures. Nowadays, what they put me through would be considered child abuse.

Family photo with me in the middle at age three.

Infant school was traumatic with all of its rules and regulations, playing with sand, and looking at the strange scribbles on the wall called letters and words. Interaction with the other children was also strange for me, as I was introverted and shy. It became obvious who was stronger, weaker, brighter, and fitter. I had to assimilate all of these traits to endeavour to pass the day unscathed, especially when there was one particular strong, tall, and fit girl called Leslie Pestal, who enjoyed punching the weaker boys. I struggled with reading; it was as if this was a very slow way of absorbing knowledge. I did not get any pleasure from stories. My brain enjoyed purely visual stimuli. Even today, everything I am writing in this book is all from highly graphic visual memories.

I had a two-mile walk to school and had to fend for myself from an early age, being woken up at seven o’clock to watch my parents leave for work at five minutes past. My sprung bed, bought at an auction along with most of our other cheap furniture, was ‘nearly’ comfortable. Our house was heated by one coal fire in the small lounge, and the windows in winter were thick with ice.

I was made rounders captain of the school (rounders is similar to baseball), was top in the school chess tournaments, and top at model making. What use were these subjects going to be for me?

In February 1961, when I was eight, I observed a solar eclipse. It still is the only one I have ever seen, and on 12 April of the same year, three days after my birthday, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space; history was being made before my eyes.

My father’s first car, an old Renault with a bench front seat – registration number MZ 5960 – was a heap of junk. He was hoodwinked by a car dealer because any registration with a letter ‘Z’ in it was an import from Northern Ireland, a perfect reason for the dealer to offer him only a quarter of his money back when it started playing up.

His second car was a little Standard 8. In this car, you had to enter the boot from the forward-folding back seats. This was the beginning of the highlife for the Gareths, but the Moles next door always had to have the biggest car on the street.

One summer my father bought a tent and drove us to an old bombing range on the coast, Donna Nook north of Skegness. There was great sand, but there were mudflats near the seashore. He spent the whole afternoon trying to piece the tent together, only to finally discover that they had sent him the wrong tent ends. In the meantime, my mother told me to get some sun (I was seven years old), and by the time we were driving home, I was crying in pain from the third-degree burns on my back. My mother applied calamine lotion, but I spent the whole night sobbing. I peeled terribly over the next week, and I blame that burn for the faint scars I bear, and the possibility of sinister problems with my skin in the future.

We used to holiday in Ireland every year. Initially we travelled by steam train from Kingsfield to Heysham near Morecombe in Lancashire, caught the evening steamer, and tried to sleep in a bunk bed, but my excitement and motion sickness prevented me from resting. Early next morning we’d glide into the dock in Grachester and disembark from the gangways carrying our cases, to be greeted by my Uncle Ernie, Auntie Mandy, and grandparents. This was a joyous time of my childhood; however, I usually argued with my annoying cousins, Carol and Christine. We all travelled the length and breadth of Ireland over the years with the families singing, and usually by the middle of the afternoon, we’d all end up in the pub savouring the alcohol and breathing the smoky fumes.

But by the end of the evening, my mother and her sisters would be quarrelling, as the alcohol augmented peoples’ points of view as it typically does with most Irish family members.

Often they would rent a holiday cottage for all the family to stay in, including my mother’s sisters, their husbands and children, and my grandparents. My father bought me a badminton set, and this is where I started to develop my hand-eye coordination as I mastered the shuttlecock. For many years we would trek to Ireland and visit many parts, savouring the drinking habits of this race of people and exploring the coast and public houses. I have always cherished my memory of watching my father kiss the Blarney Stone for luck. He had to lie backwards and pull himself toward the stone upside down, with a 200-feet drop beneath him. But now you kiss a lump of stone standing up because of Health and Safety, which is not quite the same.

My Uncle Ernie from Grachester, an ex-navy officer, would visit us in Kingsfield, and one evening, he persuaded us to go to the cinema. We went to see my first movie, which was called Sink the Bismarck. It was in black and white, of course, at a Kingsfield cinema called the Regal. It was an incredible experience. Soon after that I went with my mother to see Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday. I remember the usher at this cinema who was an obnoxious little chap dressed in a crimson suit and matching peaked cap.

I was promoted to rounders captain at school at the age of ten, and my skills at catching balls one-handed with flying leaps impressed the games master. However, my footballing skills were non-existent, and I toe-ended every kick. I used to be like the kid in the film Kes in which the boys line up to be picked by the best players. I was usually picked last, with the fat kids, but it wasn’t too bad, as they didn’t expect a lot from me.

I took to chess and played a lot of games with a nerd of a boy called Paul. At first he would generally win, but after a few weeks, I started to dominate his game. His revenge was that he bought some sneezing powder and asked if I wanted to smell some perfumed spice. I declined, but then he produced a little red snuff box and held it to my nose. I started to inhale, but he tipped the whole box of powder onto my nostrils. I couldn’t believe the pain! I ran around his house screaming for water to clean this dreadful stuff from my nose. I walked home from his house, another two miles, and told my parents what had happened. They told me to stay away from him from then on.

My father used to take me to the Kingsfield City football home matches at Sincil Bank. The crowds were well behaved, and I never heard anyone swear. The entertainment factor was not exhilarating enough for me to consider the game seriously. This was a disappointment for my father, as he had once been a semi-professional, playing for a Northern Irish club called the Greens, otherwise Glentoran. He was desperate to see me play some team sport, and he would take me to some of his Sunday league games in his latter playing years so I could observe his waning skill at kicking a piece of leather.

My teeth became rotten at the age of nine. This, I believe, was because I had developed a passion for sweets (candies). My parents would allow me to consume them at bedtime and didn’t encourage me to brush my teeth. I hated butter and green vegetables, and I used to think squirting water out of the cavity between my front central upper teeth was extremely clever. That was until I visited the dentist and he extracted the top four incisors whilst I was under gas. This was devastating for my confidence, as I had false teeth made and was ridiculed for many weeks. Another lad, called Jimmy Jar, was in the same predicament, but he just never used his top lip and lived with his brown decaying teeth for many years after. Good footballer though.

At the age of ten, I was placed into a class with a fearsome-looking teacher called Mr Beal. He was a large, portly character, smoked his pipe in class, but was quite observant. He noticed I was poor at my maths, and so he told me, along with another lad, to sit at teacher’s desk. We thought this was a punishment, but in fact our maths came on in leaps and bounds. Mr Beal saw our efforts and encouraged us even more, whereupon I think I became a bit of a pet. My teachers also encouraged my modelling skills, and my Georgian house and Queen Elizabeth cruise liner were great, except the fish glue we used smelt foul.

Time came for the eleven-plus exams. I had no idea what was happening and was not prepared for the importance of answering the questions carefully. I failed – well, as I was told, ‘just failed’. My father attended the school where he was informed by the headmaster, a Mr Harrod (Herod more like it), that I would never be an achiever, completely surprising my father. He could not believe how cruel teachers could be, but he never told me this until I reached the age of twenty-three.

I needed a new bicycle to ride to my new all-boy secondary school called Rosemary Secondary Modern, as it was four miles away. The last mile was downhill, and the final fifty yards was a steep decline into the entrance, and was patrolled by the prefects. My new bike, bought locally by my parents for £19, was my dream mode of transport. It was equipped with levered-chain gear changer, transparent, orange-tinted mudguards, white tape on the racing handlebars, and a bright metallic red frame. I was as proud as Punch of this material possession. So, adorned in my new school uniform blazer and short grey pants, I rode off into the sunrise alone, not really knowing what to expect. The glide down the hill was exhilarating, but on turning down the steep cliff of a road toward the entrance of the school, I panicked. The gate was speeding toward me, and in my immaturity, I pulled the wrong brake and skidded off the road. I rolled over my handlebars, tearing my pants and hiding my tears from the hysterically laughing couple of prefects who had never witnessed such a display of crashing ability. (Great start – ‘flip me’!)

This is the place where I came to life, learning everything about the psychology of life, and where my peers were desperate to part with their knowledge of girls and sex. It was great, except for the greatest bane of a schoolboy’s life – homework. I made friends with many boys who had similar strengths and desire for fun.

Arriving at this school at eleven years of age opened my eyes to swearing. I had never heard the ‘F’ word before, as my parents never swore, except for ‘bugger’ now and again. So I had to change to adapt to my peers, as good boys didn’t swear and bad boys did, and all my friends swore. C’est la vie.

One Saturday while travelling to Kingsfield on the upper deck of the bus, I started swearing like the big boys do to some younger friends I was with. I was showing off, of course, and not really noticing the other passengers when this giant of a man walked down towards me and gave me such a rocketing, threatening to clobber me if he heard me swear again in the future. I was stunned, but I learnt a big lesson: it’s not clever to swear and even declares your intellectual capabilities. The more moronic you are, the easier you find it is to swear.

My first record purchase was ‘Wild Thing’ by the Troggs, and my first LP album was Aftermath by the Rolling Stones. I enjoyed going to the record shops, though it wasn’t really my thing.

Sex education became a regular playground topic, as boys took turns explaining the ins and outs of coupling. (Sorry for the pun.) It took me two years to get my head around it, then the hormones started to flow and things began to happen to me that I found hard to explain, resulting in flushes, wet dreams, a breaking voice, and the pleasurable feeling from that stiffening thing between my legs.

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The approach of school holidays was a time when a few privileged boys would be eligible to miss a week of schooling in order to enjoy an educational jolly to a far-off country. I asked my parents if it would be possible for me to take the next school trip to Italy the following late spring term, and to my surprise they said it would, as long as I saved half my pocket money each week to help towards spending money. The total cost of this holiday was £14, and pocket money was whatever I could save. By the time spring came round, I had managed to save £4, and my parents made it up to £5. Spending money was handed to the teacher, Mr Cole, and we were off – thirteen boys heading for the adventure of a lifetime. Our trip took us on a coach journey to Dover, a ferry ride to Calais, and a long train journey to Milan where we changed for Rome, seeing parts of Switzerland on the way. When we arrived in Rome we were amazing to see all the relics, statues, and fountains, to try all the different types of pasta and more pasta, and to just to absorb the sights, sounds, and atmosphere of this legendary world. The Vatican was enormous, and my strongest recollection about this incredible building was the room with all the implements of torture where people who fell foul of worshipping some other form of religion would be given the chance to experience hell.

A couple of days later we headed for the railway station and boarded a train for Naples. On arrival we hopped onto a small-gauge railway that trickled its way some three or four miles to a small village resort called Vico Equense.

The hotel was on the beach, and we enjoyed the warm sea and sand. We ventured even further on the railway to Sorrento and across to the Isle of Capri. The sights were amazing, and my best memory was of travelling on the funicular and looking down on the sea, with its depth of aqua marine and turquoise shades, and watching the fish swim underneath the small cruise ships. These vessels appeared to be weightless. Returning via Sorrento, I had to buy my parents a memento of my experience, and I settled on a model sailing ship made out of bull’s horn.

Back at the hotel, I was persuaded to try to smoke. With the last episode having left me breathless, I couldn’t look weak to my new acquaintances, so I summoned up my strength and inhaled the gas of nicotine. Once again I turned green and coughed my way to the bathroom – still a boy.

After three days, we packed our suitcases for the journey home, jumped onto our waiting train in Naples, and began our long, arduous return train expedition. The trains were uncomfortable, but we had never noticed on the way out. Now that we were returning, though, they became torturous. I remember getting off at Basle and seeing the three-borders meeting place where you could stand in Germany, France, and Switzerland all at the same time. However, this stop was our downfall, as we missed our train and had to wait hours with very little food for another. The next train took us to Dunkerque, where we had to wait hours for the ferry. So catching the coach in England was a relief, as we all could get some sleep. When I arrived home I looked gaunt and dishevelled and was ravenous for the sausage, egg, and bacon placed before me.

What a great time though! This experience stiffened my resolve to become an adventurer.

Chapter 2

Hormonal Effects

M y father encouraged me to take up canoeing. I don’t know why, as he never taught me to swim, which seemed even more peculiar as he had been in the navy, leading seamen serving on HMS Norfolk in the last war. I can’t imagine what was going through his head, leaving his eighteen-year-old son to his own devices to play in deep, cold, rushing water. I made sure I always wore my lifejacket, and eventually he bought me a slalom-type canoe, and I had a couple of years paddling up and down the River Witham including the old Roman canal, the Fosse Dyke. I was shot at with airguns and catapults and had bricks dropped on me from the High Bridge in Kingsfield, but I never let the bullies get to me.

Lesson for life – never leave yourself exposed.

The canoe club I joined was run by a chap called Gordon, who lived in a barge on the Brayford, an expanse of lake-like water where the river joined the canal in the centre of Kingsfield. Gordon invited me onto his barge and showed me his living area, canoe storage area, and sleeping quarters. As I looked into his bunkroom, I felt his hand travel up my shorts. I twisted and pushed him. He apologized, saying he thought I was up for some fun. My response was, ‘Goodbye, Gordon!’ On leaving the barge, (first) I slipped on the jetty and somersaulted into the dirty water catching my shin on a rusty nail on the way down. Dragging myself onto my bike, I pedalled home some eight miles, and walked up Steep Hill towards the cathedral. At the top of the hill, I peddled through an old Roman arch (Newport Arch) and whilst I was overtaking a stationary car beside an old-style petrol pump, (second) the driver opened his door. I was unable to take avoiding action, and I crashed headfirst into the window of the door, bounced back, and lay on the street crying and bleeding. After the driver bought me a drink, I continued home another three miles. Jumping the kerb with my front wheel, (three) I caught a small stone swerved my wheel into the lamppost, bashed my knee on the base of the post, and looked down to see the skin peeling off my shin. Ouch, what day! Everything comes in threes!

Two weeks later I heard that Gordon had tried to abuse another boy, who reported him to the police; he was soon imprisoned for a number of years.

I joined the school badminton team and enjoyed the extra little skill I had developed from playing as a boy in Ireland on our holidays. The school purchased a set of badminton nets, and I was soon picked for the team. We travelled to other schools to challenge their best.

I developed a liking for science and maths, but was always very mediocre at most subjects, except for art. Mr Barnaby, the art teacher, had seen that my close friend, Nigel Parkinson, and I had a flare for painting; he would allow extra time for us to refine this talent and recommended that we both attended art college, where I produced some of my best impressionistic oil paintings. At the same time, I became friendly with another boy called Chris Payton, a nice lad who was always being picked on by the idiot bullies, such as Jimmy Jar, who didn’t really physically hurt Chris, just used him as an easy target. Chris helped me purchase a guitar, and we practiced together at his house near the town centre. I didn’t realize that I had tuned my guitar wrongly for the first year; however, once I learned how to tune it properly, I was into learning chords and plucking my way to folk song fame.

Another friend, Nigel Heather, attended the same school, and we became good fishing buddies. We would ‘leg off’ (skive) school to enjoy this pastime. We’d looked as if we were riding to school as normal, but then we’d cycle to a favourite fishing stream where we would fish for pike. The day would pass by, and we would start talking about cars, bikes, and girls. Since our hormones were kicking in, girls would soon be the main topic of conversation.

Each of the girls known to us had different personalities and charms, and we would scrutinize the various encounters with these gorgeous creatures not really knowing how to read any signals of attraction. There were the girls who were not so gifted with looks; they were very forward in their outlook on sex. The nicer-looking girls retained their innocence for as long as they could – at least twenty minutes!

I believe the three of us were all a similar size ‘down below’, but we never compared; however, I was getting some peculiar looks from some girls whom I’d never had any acquaintance with before. Nigel would always take great delight in stealing my girlfriends, and I became hardened to the way girls felt, as they would step aside from me in favour of Nigel. He was a little more experienced at the game, but he couldn’t resist showing off. I consequently decided to go further afield and managed to get a date with Michelle Griffin, a girl from the adjoining estate. She had long blonde hair, and I met up with her on a few occasions for a snog (passionate kiss). Heartbreakingly, she ditched me for not being more sexually active. I just couldn’t get my head around these crazy humans.

At that early age, I was becoming rampant like the rest of the outgoing boys; our hormones were making us think of nothing else but the female form (and fishing of course). I met a girl, Julie, with whom I became friendly. We would romp off to the woods and canoodle. On the third encounter of this type, she became more inquisitive and undid my trousers only to say, ‘Wow! The rumours are true!’ She relieved me immediately, and we both kept on smiling all that afternoon. The following day, while my parents were at work, she visited my house and we proceeded up to my bedroom. We both became aroused and removed our clothes. This time she became assertive and sat on my large friend absolutely blowing my mind. My first shot at intercourse. She was groaning with pleasure, but the only thought in my brain was that I must not ejaculate inside her (this is how babies are made, if you already didn’t know). I made a large mess, and my relief was tranquillizing.

I soon became bored with her – not the sex though, which she realized, and our relationship took a turn for the worse when she said she was falling in love as I became more dispassionate towards her. Then one evening there it was – the knock on the door from hell. This strange-looking woman and her husband asked if I was Bruce Gareth. When I informed them that I was, they asked for my father. When he came to the door, they asked him if it was all right to come in to discuss their daughter, Julie. He agreed, and they came in and sat down. I was wondering all this time what was going to take place. The woman revealed a small book and proceeded to open it at certain pages and point out and read out some of its contents. It was Julie’s diary, a complete breakdown of her life’s sexual events with me in every detail. I could feel a cold sweat breaking out of every pore. My father looked at me and asked if I understood what was being said and if it was true. I said I understood, but denied any involvement with Julie except for a little kissing and canoodling. I suggested she was becoming obsessive. The parents, obviously embarrassed, went away feeling as though they had no resolution to their daughter’s promiscuity and coming of age, especially when she had thrown in the fact that she might be pregnant. I was confident she wasn’t, but during the following month, as we waited for nature to take its course, she was saying to friends, ‘I want it to look like