All I Ever Wanted Was Love: The Brutal Truth

By Tony Brent

Too much thinking, pondering, wondering drives me insane. The anger, the rage in me - fuck, I've caused so much pain. Pill for this, pill for that, I blame the system back then for the way I act. Life's fucked up, it's so damn depressing with my personality disorder that I've been suppressing. They say they'll call me but they never do, but all

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Brent
• Release date: Nov 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805412427

Book preview

The Story Back Then

I wanna tell you a story, the late great Max Bygraves used to say, for those of a certain age who remember him. This phrase led to how I came to write about this journey. I wanna tell you MY story.

It was never going to be a happy-ever-after book, but I knew if I was going to do this, it had to be my story and not what THEY would rather I say. If it was going to be done properly, I had to erase what little amount of empathy or care I had for anyone’s feelings and just charge into this world. I would have rather blurred out my life at such a speed it would be impossible to turn back. I had to get to the other end of this dark and lonely tunnel, if anything, for closure on certain things.

I sat down and thought about the content and the experiences I had encountered. I suddenly realised the unhappy life I had led, ironically, not in the children’s homes but with the two families I was placed with. They caused me misery and pain, but in different ways, and the one family I had grown to love so much were snatched away from me in a blink of an eye.

Also, out of the very little respect I have left for any of the families I was adopted into, if I were to write a book, it would have to be after both step-parents were dead.

This has been a challenge for someone who left school without any exam grades with the attention span and memory of a goldfish. It’s unlocked the vaults of bad memories in that big dark cave in the very back of my fraggled head that I never wanted to confront again.

I hope, by reading about my experiences, you realise there is help and hope, and deal in a more positive way than I did with the brick walls that you will come up against and the parasites of life.

This book is really a brutal and honest account of my life, past and present.

I hope this will be a journey as much for you as it has been for me.

The Poem ‘All I Ever Wanted Was Love’

Too much thinking and pondering make me insane.

The anger, the rage in me, fuck, I’ve caused so much pain.

Pill for this, pill for that; I blame the system for how I now act.

Life’s funny; it’s also depressing with my personality disorder that I’ve been suppressing.

They say they’ll call me, but they never do.

All I ever wanted was love from someone like you.

The shouting, the beatings, the belt strap coming down on me relentlessly.

I was put there by the care system for them to look after me.

The happiest days of my life were in the children’s homes, not with them that call themselves a family.

Well, isn’t that a fucking irony?

All I ever wanted was love; all I ever got was hurt.

The parasites of society took everything: my pride, my soul, even my shirt.

We don’t know what the future holds apart from death.

Either by natural causes or an overdose of meth

It’s all a mystery, but mostly it’s misery.

No one cares, but then I don’t want pity or their sympathy.

All I want is a peaceful life with my cat on my lap and a dog for walks and to play.

To throw a ball and fetch and help me forget my fucked-up life, if only for one day.

A Dumping Ground for the Unloved & Unwanted

The Gables: The Best Years of My Life

I was born on the 3rd of November 1968 in Hackney at the then-named Salvation Army Mothers’ Hospital on Lower Clapton Road, E5. I was named Andrew Tony Brent, the son of unmarried Christine Brent and someone called Norman Vella (one of the many parasites). Christine was of Anglo-Indian heritage, and Norman Vella, the man believed to be my dad, was Maltese. I was born a bastard (a child born to parents who are not married to each other).

All I really know about my mother was that she was someone who, let’s just say, did what she had to do to survive in life, which, as you continue to read, you’ll see is exactly what I have had to do all my life. In fact, I think we are the same in that respect with our lives, and the paths we would take were almost identical. She was a sex worker, so I was told, and Vella, I suspect, was her pimp. I will talk more later about her because she came into my life a few times, off and on, whilst in care.

I was the oldest of five; there was Stephen, Leroy, Natasha and Nikhola (all by different fathers). There’s a pattern here with her lifestyle, which I have no problems with actually and never have, but I think she was used by these people either for sex or sex for money or possibly drugs. From what I have been told, she lived a colourful yet chaotic life. She probably grew up being abused by men and maybe came to accept this as normal. You know there’s a saying, ‘Like father, like son,’ well, I was ‘Like mother, like son.’ I feel like the mirror image of how I’ve lived my life to a certain degree with what she had, and who knows could still be going through. Empathy is not a word I use lightly, but I could empathise with her situation.

I don’t like empathy because, to me, it’s a wasted emotion. I can’t show empathy with someone I don’t know, yet it’s required in certain jobs like customer service, for example, or my brief time working with Westminster Council listening to the lowlifes bleating on about their misery of the dripping tap. I would be expected to come out with some crap like, Oh, I’m terribly sorry, sir or madam, that must be absolutely awful for you. I really can’t imagine what you must be going through. Oh, how are you coping with this? It must be awful to live with. All I really wanted to say was, You know what? Tell someone who actually gives a fuck, you lowlife degenerate.

We had a saying in the prison service when some scumbag came up to us, bleating what a hard life they had and what a miscarriage of justice it was for getting caught after mugging some poor old lady’s pension after she’d picked it up from the post office: Fuck off, twat. If you want sympathy, you’ll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. This would generally be my answer.

Stephen was born on the 27th of July 1970 and placed into care shortly after. He was lucky and was fostered and adopted by a lovely family from an early age. He was born with undeveloped hands meaning his fingers hadn’t developed as they should. I hope this wasn’t the reason he was placed into care but rather my mother, Christine, for whatever reason, was unable to look after him. He is a year and a half younger than me. Like my mother, I will come back to Stephen later on.

Leroy was born on the 14th of May 1972 and also sadly went through the system into the land of the unwanted, and like myself suffered abuse at the hands of the foster family he was placed with.

Natasha had by far the saddest outcome in her short life. Natasha was born on the 28th of January 1974. She died of what we then called cot death which is now called Sudden Death Syndrome. Mom went in one morning to see how she was and to do the usual things most loving caring mothers did and Natasha had passed away in her sleep. The only comfort here is I know Mom would have given all the love and time she could to Natasha and the fact Natasha had never suffered.

Nikhola was born on the 8th of December 1975. She eventually went to Barbados to live with her biological father. The spelling of her name is correct, by the way. To me, it signifies she was special to my mother, who wanted her to be different to the rest of us, who were all then still in the land of the unwanted, trapped in an uncaring system.

Later on in life, well 54 years later, I actually found my mother which is why I now know key dates and events but we will get to that part later on in this book.

Abortion, sterilisation, or even better, sew it up, for fuck’s sake. Why put yourself through this pain? Why put yourself through the pain of carrying Natasha for nine months only to wake up one morning to find she had stopped breathing?

So many questions I need to ask you; only then can I get closure.

I don’t blame my mother for anything that happened back then or for the path she went down, which I followed. It was the system that turned me into one fucked up loon.

This fragile boy had lost trust in those that would enter my life, who were there to protect and love me. She was another one who became a VICTIM of what I call the parasite brigade, tossed around from parasite to parasite, used and abused by everyone that came into her life.

I was too young to remember anything about my life at this stage, and goodness knows, I have trouble remembering what day it is with my fraggled fucked-up head being in the state it is today. A lot of information and things I share with you came from social workers and staff I met whilst in care who looked after me. Plus, from the people who became my good friends, the parasites of society I met on the way and my own analysis of everything.

Hackney Council placed me into care at the ripe old age of six weeks old, or thereabouts, in a care home called The Gables in Epping. I stayed there for eight years, and I must say, on the whole, they were a very happy eight years. In fact, both children’s homes were indeed the happiest days of my childhood. To this day, I have no nice memories of the foster family I ended up with and very few happy memories of the family who later would adopt me. So I am guessing I was allowed to at least bond with my mother briefly before being put into the care of The Gables in Epping.

I was assigned a social worker called Mary Knobs, who thankfully remained my social worker for around 12 years. Mary was your typical lovable auntie type who was always happy when she saw me. I wasn’t the only child at The Gables who was under her wing, but I seemed to be the one she spent more time with. I remember she would always cuddle me, and I was always sad and cried when she left. I’ll come back to Mary later on.

I met some nice kids as I grew up in The Gables and some nasty little fuckers, who, because I was the youngest, bullied me. Looking back, that just toughened me up for the life ahead that was waiting for me. For those eight years that I was in care at The Gables, I was the youngest. I saw kids come and go to various foster families, some of whom I would never see again, and some I did. The ones I never wanted to see again were normally those who came back to continue to relentlessly bully me. Then there were characters such as Roger. He was a black kid with what we now call, in my ‘professional/unprofessional’ opinion, autism. I am guessing it was unmanageable back then, let alone even had a name. For whatever reason, his parents couldn’t cope, so he was put in the home for difficult-to-manage children. I later found out The Gables was designed for this. He would run around the garden with a T-shirt on his head singing Looby Loo which is how he ended up with the nickname Loopy Lou. We got on great (I can’t think why!).

It was managed by the superintendent (as they were known back then), a lovely man called Mr Rhea, although he looked like a dodgy chap He had a beard, longish hippy-looking hair and a kind face with glasses and who would always, if I remember correctly, wear sandals with grey socks. (Yuck!) The staff that I remember were lovely too. There was Mrs Melia, who lived next to the home and St Margaret’s Hospital. This was where I had the tip of my finger sewn back on after catching it in the mousetrap in the larder whilst trying to get the cheese, which everyone found very amusing. I also had under my eye stitched up after some nice kid decided to throw one of those hollow tubes that attach to a hoover at my eye, which wasn’t very amusing. Mrs Melia was a lovely, retired lady who would pop in a few times a week, and we all loved her as if she was our favourite grandmother. There was also Mrs Madge who, like Mrs Melia, we all loved.

I used to attend the odd days of Epping Primary School, never when it was PE (physical education), which I hated, so I would bunk off only to be picked up by PC Plod and marched back to the children’s home. I always remember this lovable old teacher called Mrs Olga. She was near retirement, but every week she would go and buy a new dress and show it to us. Not only did I love her, but I also loved her dress sense. You couldn’t help but also love Mr Little. He was this tubby little man, always jolly and joking with the kids.

One morning, we were in assembly, ready to sing Morning Has Broken, when the headmaster announced with great sadness that Mr Little had died whilst on holiday. We were all in shock, and out of respect, we thought of him for two minutes in silent prayer. Mr Andrews was the headmaster if my memory serves me correctly. He was always smartly suited up with a serious face on him. I made his life hell, the poor man.

I was later to be introduced to a man who was my personal officer, for want of a better description, called Clive. He was this take-no-shit ex-army man with a voice that could outshout any Sergeant Major on the parade squares of Aldershot and then some. When that man shouted, The Gables would shake. The Gables was a huge mansion with a driveway and a big back garden. A large black wrought iron gate separated the home from Epping Forest, a place that held many fond memories for me and where I would spend many happy hours.

Clive, however, was a man of many talents. Not only was he an expert at putting the fear of god into you, but he was also an amazing artist. In the dining hall, as you can imagine in this very beautiful early Victorian mansion that was now my home, were these solid walls. I would sit and watch him paint the most amazing pictures around the home. On one particular wall in the dining hall, he painted a scene of Snow White with her seven dwarfs, some deer and butterflies and rabbits in the woods. He was also a master craftsman who made amazing ships out of matchsticks. He was a person I could only look up to. I would have wished he was my father, apart from the roar of his voice. In all fairness, this wasn’t directed at us but rather at the tramps who would try and enter the grounds to look through the bins at night for food. One shout or roar from him normally sent them packing.

Clive and a few other members of staff would take me and the other kids into the forest, and we would play for hours. I remember a rope swing that was above a shallow but very muddy pond. We all used to swing over, but normally ended up landing in the mud, getting covered. We loved it. When it was raining outside, we would fetch all the mattresses from our rooms – I shared with three others. We’d throw them over the banister to the bottom of the stairs and jump from the top of these wide, open stairs onto the mattresses. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. Now, of course, the PC (politically correct) and the cotton wool brigade wouldn’t allow this; after all, how dare we allow kids of today to have fun growing up? Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t have the society we have now. We also went on midnight walks in the forest; it was all so well organised and how a child’s life should be.

It wasn’t uncommon for the odd body to be found in the forest that had appeared overnight in, shall we say, rather suspicious circumstances. I never witnessed this, which, in hindsight, is probably a good thing.

One sunny day, however, I was with Roger, aka Loopy Lou. He was skipping through the forest with his T-shirt and wig on, skipping along, singing his favourite tune, Looby Loo. He went off into his own world and I probably went off into mine. On this particular day, I came across one of these that we used to call ghetto blasters – a rather big radio combined cassette player. I loved it, so I took it back to The Gables, where it was immediately taken away from me, to my astonishment and disgust, and handed into Epping police station as lost property. If I remember correctly, I threw a tantrum and stormed off to my bedroom for a few hours. I later learned that it was handed in to the police because, at the time, it was believed the radio possibly belonged to a poor unfortunate body which had turned up in the forest under suspicious circumstances.

Weeks went by, and to my delight, the police brought it back as unclaimed and let me keep it. Well, of course, it was unclaimed. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realise the dead person wasn’t going to wake suddenly and think, ‘Oh shit, where’s my ghetto blaster? I think I’ll check with those very nice policemen at the station.’

Clive, the man with the roar of thunder, would take me on trips to London’s Trafalgar Square, Madame Tussaud’s and St Katharine Docks, to name but a few. I don’t know if I was special, but as I remember, none of the other kids got these special trips out. Behind the roar and that tough exterior was a very kind, gentle, caring man who I wanted as my father. On a few occasions, I asked if he would or could adopt me, but sadly this never happened, and even more sadly, I was removed from his care.

Every year at Christmas and birthdays, we would get presents—toys, fruit, sweets, etc. In fact, I would say we were spoiled. This was all given by a charity called The Round Table. We would also go on holiday for a week every year and always to Butlins, which at the time for me was just the most amazing place. Time went on then at the age of six, which is my real first memory, we would go to Butlins again. I remember the Redcoats and the balloon man who would make a dog out of those long-shaped ones. I also recall those little red photo things you put to your eye and look through to see a picture that was taken a few days ago with the gang. Oh my, happy days indeed.

Tough Love & the Sad Goodbye

At the age of four years old (or thereabouts), I was introduced to a couple called Mr and Mrs Tuff, who lived in Harlow.

Mr Tuff was this very fat and jolly man who usually had cigarette paper on his face where he had cut his face shaving. He would always tell jokes and make people laugh.

Mrs Tuff was equally as lovable, always with a fag hanging out of her mouth and curlers in her lacquered hair. Looking back, she reminded me of Andy Capp’s long-suffering wife, the cartoon character in one of the daily tabloids. For the odd day, I would be taken to visit this lovely working-class family who lived in a council house on a square-shaped estate in Harlow. I would ride a borrowed three-wheeled bike up and down all day long. As time went on, the odd day turned into the odd weekend, which then turned into every weekend and continued without fail for the next three happy years.

My birthday and Christmas would come around, and it was a double bubble. Not only would I get presents from the children’s home, donated by The Round Table, but also from the Tuffs and all their family. I got cuddly toys and a walkie-talkie set. It was everything a kid loved, complete with a plastic police helmet. Again, I grew to love the Tuffs as my new mum and dad and yet again asked that question.

Could/would you be my new mummy and daddy?

Mr Tuff put me on his knee and explained why not. I cannot think of the reasons to this day because after the word No, I think I cried so much. I was then driven back to The Gables, still crying, and the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that next weekend I would see them all again.

Next weekend, I was in the dining hall at the window waiting for Mr Tuff to drive up in his rusty old Ford. Then I would run out to greet him and give him the almightiest hug as I had become accustomed to doing every weekend.

Something was different this time. He wasn’t the jolly man I was used to seeing, and I knew something wasn’t quite right; he seemed upset. I was called back into the office and told I could no longer see the Tuffs. I remembered running out only to see Mr Tuff driving off. I was screaming and in tears yet again. I ran after him, shouting, Daddy, come back! He stopped and got out of the car. He was crying. I was crying uncontrollably, and he said he was so sorry, but this was how it had to be. I had to be pulled away by staff because I wouldn’t let go. He drove off, and I never saw him again.

Every person in my life back then that I had formed an emotional attachment to had been taken away from me. Why put me through this pain time and time again? Was it some sick game everyone got off on and found hysterically funny? I didn’t understand why back then; now, we would call it boundaries. But why put me in this situation in the first place? Looking back now, at the age of 53, I still feel this family was the one for me. With them, I would have made a better success of my life than the one I have forged for myself today.

I think if there was ever a chance for me to prevent my life from taking the direction it did after this, it was the Tuff family.

So I now didn’t trust anyone. For me, life was just one big disappointment full of broken promises. I