25 years on

On the 1st March, 1983, I spent the afternoon of a gloriously sunny, but cold and windy, Autumn day at our neighbour's birthday party across the road.

My younger brother spent it asphyxiating in the boot of our car.

My mother and father spent that evening in Frankston hospital. Dad paced the floor, chainsmoking and Mum sat staring, crying, praying to whatever, begging "pleease, pleease don't take my son from me."

The doctor, whose name will never be remembered, had to pronounce him dead to a woman who had found her 4 year old boy, laying blue in a pile of blood, piss and bile in the family car, after a game of solo 'hide and seek' went wrong. He had to look a man in the eye and tell him that, while he was at work, his son died struggling for breath.

The next day, my family featured on the front page of the Daily Sun with the headline: FATHER WARNS AGAINST DEADLY GAME. It took up the whole of the front page with a huge picture of Baden on Santa's knee and a family portrait, minus one. All of our lives changed forever.

I usually just give a nod and a wink to the day and sing a few bars of Supertramp's It's Raining Again - his favourite song and the one he was buried to - having done much grieving long ago. But today the sun is shining just as brightly, and the chill in the air is just the same as that fucking day 25 years ago.

This one's for you mate.