I had intended this to be a short blog.
I lied.
Hey ho.
The path of good intentions ........
Today (Sunday 6th) temperatures
are back to a very comfortable 20°C and it rained continuously from around 7pm
until the small hours. The rain, slow and
steady, is much needed as the countryside is completely parched and it is hoped
this change in the weather will spell the end to a very prolonged drought.
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| Mary off for a walk! |
But, pity the poor organizers of the Fiestas de Cehegin,
yesterday also heralded the start of 10 days of partying as Cehegin celebrates
its patron festival. And they do not need rain! A fun fair is
arriving and events build up to the main events of the 9, 10 and 11, when, on
Wednesday night, the Statue of Mary de las Maravillas is taken for a walk from
the parish church to the big convent church in the town, feted for a day, and
then taken for a walk back on the 11th. So important is the Feast day that it is a declared
public holiday for the municipality.
The
Spanish, famous for eating dinner late, around 10pm usually, also party late
and most of the popular concerts do not start until 1am. I am
assured they will be packed out! I will
celebrate with attendance at concerts given by the town band and choral society
tonight and tomorrow at a more modest 8pm.
There is some significant other breaking news, but I am
keeping that until next time when I hope it will have some definition. Watch
this space.
The Biog
My outpouring last time, gave rise to a burst of writing and
3 chapters of my biography got written in draft and I started to experiment
with a way of writing using a “fictitious” me called Tom it makes some stuff less painful - especially later on and then playing
around with writing in the first and third persons and also as pure narrative. Hope it doesn't confuse too much!
I now have to ponder and think
which works best or if I just continue to use a real mix of the three depending
on whole it flows. Lets see. All new ground.
(I am wondering whether to continue chronologically or thematically polishing off each shadow on the stairs like a serial killer!)
Feedback on these incomplete, draft
extracts of he first three chapters, greatly appreciated ……..
(Fotos added to relieve boredom - not part of the final work)
Ok, here goes .....
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| Silhouette made on Brighton Pier |
1. This
is Tom [and voices off].
This is Tom.
Hello Tom.
Tom could be any name, in
any town but not of any time.
Tom is a “now” man. Tom is a man of his time and out of his time.
Tom is cursed.
Tom is a hostage to fortune.
[insert your own cliché here]
Tom, born in the mid-fifties,
a British baby boomer.
Tom today has started to ask
questions. [not before time]
Tom, wondering just how he
got to be part of this mad conjuring trick.
Tom, feeling like a ball in
some clowns juggling act being carried out on a tight rope.
Tom is nearly sixty and
mystified.
Tom feels he is a rabbit pulled out of the wrong hat. [Would the rabbit know if it were pulled out
of the right hat?]
Tom always looking for the “way
out.” No, not assisted dying, but the door into “meaning”. That world everybody
else seems to be enjoying.
But not Tom. [not superficially anyway]
If you are a guy. If you are
a baby boomer, Tom could be you. Like Tom, this is your history.
Hello.
Welcome.
Tom’s credo. The great
cosmic joke: You’re born. You live. You die. [Drum roll and cymbal clash] Ta-daah! The end. [Bemused laughter and hesitant applause]
It hadn’t always been like
that.
Tom used to be “happy”
shuffling around inside a God shaped hat, preparing himself for heaven, the
Promised Land. [Happy is a concept that eludes Tom most of the time.]
You’re born. You live. [You pay God’s insurance premium –weekly
instalement plans available.] You die. You go to heaven. Neat. The meaning
of life – solved.
Tom had more than fully paid
his insurance policy [Low Church Anglican,
High Church Anglican, Russian Orthodox] and Tom would have kept paying
until the day he would be pulled from the hat to meet his maker.
For Tom this is no longer God’s
cosmic joke. Sitting alone in a monkish cell, Tom understood this glib joke.
Tom turned the key in the lock and out went God. Just like that. Tom joined the
real world, that offered freedom, happiness, the cosmos. [Divine intervention? A road to Emmaus moment?] And another yet to be understood joke.
But we are getting ahead of
ourselves.
If only life ran like an
autobiography, neatly, in chapters, from birth to death. Writing this would be so
much easier, logical, “oh yes, that was due to the incident of Tom, the old man
and the Florentine biscuits in chapter 6” or “the death of Mar Gregorius in chapter 13” or “the great family secret of chapter 4” well
sorry, no.
What we have is a large can of spaghetti. [Yuk.]
A large can of spaghetti in tomato sauce [Heinz?] one of only three things Tom simply couldn’t think about,
let alone eat, without feeling instantly queasy [and a good thing too. The other two?
Later maybe.]
Taking the large family
sized can of spaghetti, we remove the lid and pour the contents cold, into a
bowl. That unbelievably hideous orange sauce, those white worms, cold and
semi-congealed and the noisome smell!
Disgusting.
Before you is Tom’s life in
a nut-shell, [a bowl actually] a
coagulation of mixed metaphors. [Guessed what comes next?] …………………………………………………………
2. Chosen.
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| On the Sands at Isle of Wight (1957). |
“You know Mummy loves you
very much”
Isn’t that taken as a given?
Mummy is there. End of story. I know
this.
“Well you are very special. Mummy
chose you. Yes, I went into this room and there were six babies and from the
six I chose you. You Tom, with your head of bright red hair, your cheeky smile
and your gurgling laughter.”
I had always known this, I
had heard this story since I was a babe in arms, it was almost in my DNA; the
room, the six cots, the choosing.
Everybody knew it, Mum, Nan,
Auntie Edie, and Auntie Ciss.
I was different, special
because I was the “chosen” boy with the red hair. I was special because I had a
Silver Cross pram, a Rolls Royce of prams, way above my station. It was my
entitlement. I was chosen.
“Of course you wouldn’t
remember, you were only six weeks old, and all that red hair fell out replaced
by the mousy brown you now have.
Did I ever wonder “Why?” or “How?”
Of course not silly, I was about three when I first remember being told and
often over the years I would ask for the “choosing story” my history, my
re-birth. Being walked through the park in my Silver Cross pram.
I may not have wondered
“Why?” or “How?” but they (along with the other four "serving men") had a room on the stairs. The door was locked.
I did feel special. I came
to realise that not many people were chosen. Most just had to rely on what the
stork delivered. “Mum, where did I come from?”
Easy, “you came from the room with six cots!” Problem solved. Who needs birds and bees [or storks?]
At some point, the story got
expanded and I got to know a little of the “why?” maybe I was around six or
seven, by then it was just Mum and I versus the world.
The “choosing” had a prequel
that included the fact that Mum had had a baby on January 1st, it
was in the paper. The first baby of 1956. I still have the picture and the
little stork card that was sent to friends and relatives heralding the arrival
of Stephen. Sadly, he had a hole in the
heart and died within a few short months.
“Well, I was told that if I wanted another child I would have to go and
chose one. So, because of Stephen I chose you”.
I was chosen from the Mayday
Hospital, Croydon. Was I the silver lining? The consolation prize? Or just the
chosen one.
Well I am Tom and I am adopted. “Oh, how nice.” But there is a shadow on the stair already.……………………………………………………….
3. Stockwell
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| 17 months and 1 day! (25, Jan, 1958) |
A radio playing classical
music.
I am in kitchen.
I am standing on a chair, a
knitting needle in hand, conducting the radio. I am four.
Me, Mum and Dad lived on the
first floor of a terraced house in Hargywne Street, Stockwell, South London with
rooms roughly partitioned with hardboard.
It was Aunt Edie’s house.
How I got from Croydon,
where I was chosen, living in a flat that overlooked a park [Trees, swings, autumn leaves] to that
terraced house in Stockwell is a blank [for
now] but there I was conducting the radio orchestra. Where did that come
from? According to mum I had never seen an orchestra and as to the conducting.
I don’t remember a television.
Aunt Edie was actually Mum’s
step-grandmother, a strict, pint-sized narrow minded harridan. The flat was a charitable gesture of some sort
and we were reminded of that fact often. Gratitude was expected and exacted.
There were four rooms, front
to back; front bedroom, back bedroom, back parlour, kitchen, a toilet then
stairs to the garden.
We had to go downstairs for
the weekly ritual bath using a tin bath that normally hung from an outside wall
and, when in use, was placed over a drain in the middle of the kitchen floor.
From Aunt Edie’s kitchen was
a lean-to that contained a huge and ancient mangle. I can still hear my screams
as I managed to trap my fingers between the two huge rubber rollers. The house
had a small back garden, complete with Anderson shelter and backed onto the wall
of the local hospital.
Up the road from the house was
a rag and bone man’s yard, every day out he would come on his horse and cart
ringing his hand-bell, calling “an‘ol’yon”
[any old iron].
Dad was mainly absent, he
worked as a merchant seaman. I have hardly any memories of him except perhaps
once being swung in his arms in the back gardens, avoiding the Anderson shelter.
He had a fag in his mouth.
I had two pet rabbits, Pinky
and Perky, until after a Sunday lunch cooked by Dad. During his long absences he
did not send money and we lived off the begrudged charity of Aunt Edie. Meals
of mashed potato for me and nothing for Mum being frequent. But, somehow Sunday
was a day for a treat and that treat was usually a bottle of Tizer [“the appetizer”] bought from the corner
shop, with its hard black screw-top and bright orangey-red fizzy liquid. I was a king with my Tizer. Sunday specials or
Saturday night treats were to be a feature of life for many years to come.
In Dad’s absence Auntie
Edie, ruled the roost. Did she know more
about this man, who wasn’t (often) there, on the stair?
........................................................................... as they say ...... to be continued.
By the way........
Had a lovely Birthday, cooked myself a Paella and received loads of birthday wishes via facebook, emails and SKYPE. Thanks. Some pics of my lunch ...
Ready
to go! Simply take round rice, parsley, peas, red pepper, pimienton
(hot), salt, black pepper, paella spices, saffron, garlic, onions, plum
tomato, lemons, chicken, clams, squid, mussels, prawns (raw), gamberones
(huge 20p each) ...... juggle them around a bit and "tadaaaar"
....... PAELLA ......... my new signature dish! Wash it alld own with
a bottle of Spanish Cava and life is good. 
Made better by a SKYPE
call from Nick Tirado whilst eating! "HAPPY 59th BIRTHDAY TO ME"
Birthday cake for one!
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| and the Dell arrived! |
