Letter 15 written on 13th May 2013

13^th May 2013

Dear Catherine,

I had a meeting with Ms Sorahan, your form teacher a few weeks ago.  She took me through your GCSE predicted grades.  She was very complimentary about you, which is a credit to you, that you work so hard and behave so well in the College.  I have to say I am also very proud of what you have achieved in all the subjects you are taking.  I notice you now do Spanish and that you are predicted an A.  I am sure your Spanish cousins would be very impressed to know you are learning their language and that they would be delighted to help you at any time.  I started to learn Spanish, before I met your mother, when I switched to Greek.  Now that we have separated, I am afraid I do not have any cause to practice my Greek.  I did go to the Greek Church this Greek Easter for midnight mass; a service I always enjoy.  It was the first time I visited the church since it was built.  When Fr Anastasios first conceived the idea of a Greek Church in Kingsbury, I helped him a lot and arranged meetings for him with the Planners and accompanied him there. 

Getting back to languages, you are doing very well with three foreign languages as well as your native English.  Maybe you will do languages after you leave school.  Someone said you were considering Architecture; I am sure you would be very good at that too; in fact I bet you would enjoy it too.  It is important to enjoy the work you do. Ms Sorahan said you were one of the ‘gifted’ members of your school year and would be certain of a place in St Dominic’s Sixth Form College, or that you may possibly try Watford Grammar.  Either way, I will be happy for you, both schools are very good in my opinion, but if you choose another, I am sure that would be good as well.  Wherever it is, I would like to know, so I can follow your progress. 

My big news of the moment, is that I am waiting to exchange contracts on a flat in Harrow.  It’s not that far from Tesco, not too close though, it is maybe a good 5 minutes or so walk.  Not that I want to be near Tesco!  It is a two bedroom flat on the first floor of a large Edwardian house.  It needs a bit of refurbishment and I am building a loft extension to provide an extra bedroom and ensuite bathroom.  The builder hopes to start work in the middle of June and I expect it will take up to three months to complete.  I will then have a lot of decoration and furnishing work to do, so realistically it will be fully ready by Christmas.  I am intending to post progress photos on my Facebook account if you ever manage to have a look. 

I also had good and bad news recently.  I went to work on 8^th April as usual – it was a Monday morning.  I had to go to a meeting first thing, but when I came back my boss called me into his office and told me that the company was going into liquidation, meaning that the company was closing down and all staff were made redundant.  It was a huge shock, coming into work in the morning with a job and going home in the afternoon, unemployed!  I thought that was the end of my working life!  It was a bit of a worry as I need to borrow money to pay my flat and refurbishment and I thought maybe the bank would not give me the money.  I only had another month on a project I was working on and offered to continue working on it even if I was not to be paid.  My boss took me aside a few days later, telling me not to say anything to anyone and said he was hoping to start up a new company and asked me to join him.  Two weeks later, the new company was formed and I was given a new contract.  I was one of the lucky ones, as only half of the original company was taken on in the new company.  Rightly or wrongly, I have been putting aside money for your university education, so I will continue to do so for as long as I continue working.  I just hope you are amenable to the idea when the time comes at your 18^th birthday.  I can’t believe it is now only 2 years away. 

I wonder how life is going for you now.  I know you are doing well at school, but I know nothing else, like where you live, or who are your friends, are you happy enough in your situation and most of all, I wonder if you ever think of me.  I hope that if you do you do not have bad thoughts of me.  All I can remember were relatively happy times when we lived together.  Something happened to turn you away from me and I can’t think, for the life of me what I might have done to you that caused you to come to that conclusion.  But as you did, I could only respect it and I will continue to do that for as long as you continue to retain that position.  I say a prayer for you almost every day and as always I would tell you that I would be very happy to hear from you if you ever considered you wanted to see me.  I am not angry with you in any way, but I would love to catch up with you at any time and try and find a way to secure our future together. 

I have to get a move on with my work now.  I will try and write again as soon as I can.  Next week I am going over to Dublin for the anniversary celebration of the ending of my secondary school education.  I doubt if I will write before I come back from it and I will tell you about it when I next write.

.

All my love for now,

dad  xxx                                              at work in a basement inTottenham Court Road