GO FIGURE

 Yes, there is quite a bit of paperwork involved in fostering.

And yes, fostering folk have to attend quite a lot of training sessions.

Home visits by social workers, though always enjoyable, are nevertheless time-consuming and demanding. When I say 'demanding' I guess I mean you have to keep your concentration up for the entire 2 or 3 hours. Yup, they don't show up for a five minute cup of tea,

I'm flagging this up mainly for anyone thinking of becoming a foster parent. 

Fostering is a fantastic vocation; there's nothing like it - but you have to be realistic about it. Fostering is hard graft, and fostering folk need to be at the top of their game 24/7.

Then there is the child.

Or in our case, children (we have multiple placements at this time).

Don't be under any illusions, children who are taken into care and need a foster home have all got harrowing stories, and are almost all affected by the things that have happened around them before they were removed from their real parents.

If it weren't for the intervention of social services who knows how screwed up the children might become, or how much of a drain on others and society in general.

And yet…

Today I visited a neighbour and shared a cup of tea, He's aged 89 and almost blind, plus his left knee is permanently painful and gives out without warning so he's borderline housebound. He lost his wife some nine or ten years ago. 

He doesn't care much for talking about himself, he prefers talking about his children and grandchildren and the world in general. This is always a sign of a well arranged mind.

And he is more than just well organised mentally; he's not merely bright he's loving and kind, generous to a T, and always ultra-courteous.

In fact, I don't think I've ever known a more exemplary person.

But today I found out more about his early years which left me agog as to how he turned out to be such a fine man, a pillar of society, a wonderful husband and father. A model human being.

His childhood was a catalogue of neglect and abuse.

When he was a small boy the war was on. His mother had left his father, who he never met, and was shacked up with a waster; a savage drinker and flake. 

She was a two-bit actress, touring the UK with a flea-circus theatre troupe putting on tacky plays up and down the country. Her partner was a musician who was attached to the cortege largely to facilitate a supply of booze. This bloke and my friend's mother lived life zig-zagging the country in a haze of fantasy in which they were glorious stars of the stage. They would dress up in stage clothes to go out the shop and pick up fags and gin and lord it over the provincial oiks. 

Madness.

My neighbour/friend from his earliest age had to tag along. Throughout the war he never went to school, or was in any place long enough to make one single friend. He'd be on a stern warning not to talk to anyone or reveal anything of his life. The travelling actors would perform at night, then go back to their digs and drink and delude themselves they were stars and that Hollywood was about to beckon. They'd sleep away the daytime, and he'd be kicked out into the street to wander around and entertain himself. Whether he was in Rochdale or Glasgow, Southport or Chatham, he'd skulk around trying not to look like catnip for the truant-catcher (yes, they existed!). He was on a big warning not to alert the authorities about his circumstances.

His tale gets worse.

Over our second cup of tea he told me about the other half of his life as a child, the half that was even worse than his solitary life on the road.

His mother was always trying to dump him and go off.

When she got fed up with his presence she'd put the word out around town to find a family who'd take a boy in. There were plenty of takers back then. She'd pay them a small fee for 'looking after' her child so she could swan around the country unencumbered. And the people who took him in could treat him however they liked.

He was never sent to school because of the danger that the authorities might wonder who he was and that the game would be up. Instead the families put him to work.

Aged eight his day job was to scour the beach looking for driftwood to fuel the family fire. His evening work included walking right across town to make the payment for the family's pools coupon.

He found himself derided by the family's real children for being a skiver and a waste of food.

Not that there was much food; provisions were rationed and he generally ate leftovers, of which sometimes there were none.

His mother abandoned him six times in this way. He might be an old man now, but he remembers each abandonment with heart-rending clarity.

On one occasion she left him with a family she'd stayed with for just one night - the night before - and he didn't see her again for a whole year.

My tea got cold and went off, his story was so compelling.

And when he was done telling it, he apologised for hogging the conversation and asked me if I wanted a piece of cake then asked me how my curious family were doing. What's more, he really wanted to know. He's frail now, but still generous and kind, and caring about everyone, even people he's not met.

I told him that if he had been a child living now he'd have been taken into care like a shot.

And yet; would he have been a better person for it? How could he be a better person? He's close to perfection.

I guess if there's a point to my thinking about him a lot this evening it's that fostering helps kids, but if the basic building blocks of a decent human being are in there all you have to do is gently fan the flame.

Almost every kid we've had come and stay under our roof has been a hero one way or another.

But the question of what makes a person entire is beyond me, so I decided a while back not to spend too much time trying to understand the matter when there are potatoes to peel and beds to change.

Spuds and duvets; the grit of fostering. Yet something else is afoot and amen to whatever it is.