Introduction – Part 1

I have never blogged before and I’m really interested in the process. To begin with, I am curious about the way the number of “hits“ may grow, and I’m intrigued by the esoteric aspects of blogging, the way the tag cloud forms and grows, the necessary disciplines involved in maintaining the impetus and the level of steady interest shown by my friends, many of whom I would previously have imagined would not know a blog from a tomato sandwich.

Perhaps a little more about me and my situation would help the reader to get a “feel“ for the content, as any narrative will always benefit from flesh on the bones – at least enough to picture the life and times of the writer, his background, influences and the environmental conditions in which the work was created. I am not a professional wordsmith. The visually creative skills have been my main means of earning a crust, and even now I ask myself how I can be so presumptuous as to pose as a writer. But in the end I make no apology. I’m simply telling you a story about my life and ultimate demise, peppered with analogy and spiced with experience. If it is of interest I’m delighted, and should it help you to reach more valued judgements or conclusions which assist you to more ably determine the length and breadth of your own views – then I am indeed frankly ecstatic.

I was (only just) a “war baby“, being born in February 1945, a few months before the armistice. My mother had carried me in her womb through the dark days of soot-blackened bombsites to the dreaded sound of doodlebugs, and I’m sure the wail of air-raid sirens is something I heard clearly and memorably whilst still waiting to emerge into the pale half-light of almost peace.

She was the daughter of second-generation Latvian immigrants, who had married in Grimsby and later moved to North London. A talented artist, erudite and articulate, my mum was exactly five feet tall and round and extremely cuddly, the archetypical warm and loving mother who had few bad words to say about anyone. She was a kind and incredibly sweet mother, with whom I would often spend long evenings in front of a coal fire in our tiny living room, discussing what had been topical on our brown bakelite “wireless“, or simply exploring ideas on the secrets of the universe.

My father was a private, intense individual, an eccentric violin player of no mean accomplishment (he reached his zenith as Leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham)whose brilliant career, commenced in glory as a lead violin at the age of 14, was later to be demolished almost overnight by the onset of tuberculosis, resulting in a huge portion of his lung being excised, along with several ribs, thus rendering impossible his daily exercise – the vigorous raising and lowering of an arm on the end of a violin bow for several hours at a time.

He never recovered totally from the withdrawal of opportunity from his extraordinary talent and became monumentally embittered, a man savaged by circumstance and ravaged by his reaction to it.

I was the oldest child, big brother to two sisters, the youngest of whom recently succumbed, also to cancer, at the tender age of 50. Susie was perhaps the most persistent person in all things that interested her that I have ever known and, as an aside, it beats me that she never managed to communicate with me from “beyond“. Seriously, if anyone on earth was determined enough to want to make contact, it would have been Susie. But enough of that – more later…