Season of good will? Yea right

I Couldn’t be bothered to cook tonight so I visited my usual Kebab house for a quick fix by the way of a Doner Kebab (not my most favourite meals but adequate) I was sitting waiting and enjoying a complimentary coffee when a smartly dress guy and his equally smartly dressed daughter came in and sat down behind me. He was about 30s and the daughter about eight or nine, both were beautifully spoken. The Kurdish owner of the restaurant took their order and I continued to read my (“borrowed” from the restaurant) paper. The Father was obviously a regular as the banter between him and the owner was about how smart he looked as opposed to his usual mode of dress, as a builder. Not wishing to listen I continued to read and was asked if I wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on his daughter as he had been told that I was a regular and that they trusted me (nice thought) while he went back to the car park to get his mobile phone.

She came around the table and promptly sat down alongside me and brightly chatted quite confidently to me, did I have children ? what was my name? where do I live? do I have a Daddy that takes me out? During our chat I was confided in and told such details that Mummy and Daddy don’t live together anymore, as mummy doesn’t like him, daddy would like to live with them but Mummy has a new husband now who, she wants me to call Daddy, but I won`t as my daddy is getting his phone,to speak with Mummy to see if he can keep me for a couple of more hours.

There were lots of other tear jerking items disclosed about how Daddy cried when he was made to leave by Mummy and more intimate details about shouting and daddy being hit and the list of things went on. I could see her father coming back into the restaurant and so did she, she turned to me and said doesn’t he look handsome in his new suit, he is a very handsome man isn`t he? I think that Mummy`s silly, and that Daddy is better, kinder and nicer than Mummys husband who lives with us now.

He sat back down at the table, she said goodbye and went back to join him, they continued to talk. after he thanked me for looking after her. After a while, asshe had obviously filled him in about what we had been talking about to the extent that he felt that he should explain his situation to me and asked if he could join me as his daughter was filling in a colouring book that he had brought from the car (as well as his phone).

It turned out that he was allowed to see his daughter once a month for four hours and that this Christmas, as with last Christmas he wouldn’t get to see her until mid Jan. he had her Christmas presents in the car and was going to give them to her in the car park just before he took her back home, as her mother had refused to extend his time with her. (he had phoned her from the car park, so as not to upset his daughter)

He was a really nice character, far too well spoken to be a builder. All he said about his failed relationship was that it didn’t work out and after four and a half years he was asked for a divorce.

I collected my kebab as it was now ready and bidding them both happy Christmas and a fond goodbye I walked back to my car feeling so very sad for both the little girl and her Father, she had confided to me that she loved her dad more than anything else in the world and had asked me if I could change her situation so that she could see more of him :o((? I really felt so bad saying that I couldn’t, as her little face previously so confident, fell and she almost started to cry ( not the only one I might add)

I drove back to my boat, pretty choked up, thinking how many other “families” suffer the same division as them, How many fathers through no fault of their own, cannot see their childred at Christmas? And what a strange world it is that we live in?