What distinguishes man from the other animals? I wish I had made a note of all the answers I’ve read. Perhaps someone somewhere has compiled a long list of them. Well here is another for the collection. What distinguishes man from the other animals is the vast spectrum of “normal”. Unlike ducks and pigeons, we… Continue reading Days at boarding-school
Category: my life
Mr Sudell
One could write a memoir based on where one spent each night of one’s life. It would be like a tune on the black keys only, or a painting of the spaces between things, not the things themselves. But there would be blanks in my memoir if I tried that. I can remember when I… Continue reading Mr Sudell
Back Home from Hospital
I was admitted to hospital in January 1949, before my 7th birthday, as covered in a previous post. When I reached home from hospital I was pleased to find I had a proper bedroom. Well, it was my baby sister’s room. Her cot had been moved to my parents’ room and I was assigned a… Continue reading Back Home from Hospital
Released from hospital
It takes effort to wrestle the facts from memory. I thought that it was summer when I came out of hospital, and that it had been a six-month stay. But I was discharged in time to see a long queue outside a tobacconist / candy store in Harold Place, Hastings. The public record confirms that… Continue reading Released from hospital
Admitted to hospital
They put me in a bed with high-sided rails around it. I was offended at being put in what looked like a baby’s cot: me at nearly seven years old. I protested loudly and tearfully. If my first term at boarding-school had taught me anything, it was the importance of self-defence against ridicule from my… Continue reading Admitted to hospital
If I burn to death, they’ll be sorry
Drawing by Sally Faye Boarding school* for all its rigours was a respite from the neglect and loneliness of home. I find it difficult to speak of either, but our goal---yours and mine---is to be entertained and edified in the catharsis called human life. Merrion House School was a red-brick house once owned by Sir… Continue reading If I burn to death, they’ll be sorry
Ship of Dreams
I’m not finished with the mv Rangitata, which brought me as a four-year-old from Fremantle to Tilbury. The Rangitata hasn’t finished with me either. Our acquaintance was a six-week voyage sixty years ago but memories can still be triggered; the shuddering vibration from its engines, the smells of hot paint, engine oil, bleach, disinfectant, sewage.… Continue reading Ship of Dreams
Arriving in England
Suddenly I learned that I was not half Dutch, as I had believed for fifty years, but half Australian. I had spent my life wanting to belong somewhere: to feel a kinship, a sense of family, to be able to say, “These are my people. I am home.” I had resented England from the moment… Continue reading Arriving in England
How I learned the truth
(Continued from previous post) My mother’s beloved Singapore roadhouse was called The Gap: a prophetic name. After the war, it was nothing but a gap; one that she mourned forever and never really replaced. The gap in my life was a father. When I met him fifty years later, he admitted having been in the… Continue reading How I learned the truth
How my mother met her husband
I’ll tell you about my mother and how she got to spend the War years in a Perth suburb called Bassendean by the Swan River in Western Australia. As for my father, he lived there already. She was born on 31st August 1909 in East Sussex, England, to Vincent and Gwendolen. Her life spanned two… Continue reading How my mother met her husband
Eager cupped hands
Having started my memoirs at age four, the sensible direction to go is backwards, till I have explained how I got to be born at all: you know, how my parents met and all that, which might involve telling their life stories too. I hope it won’t be too boring. The aim is to write… Continue reading Eager cupped hands
Early childhood
I suppose I was six months old in the photo but it might be good to start when I was four. Some of the biggest dramas of my life occurred then and in the next three years. So I have some vivid memories. In writing a memoir there’s a lot to be said for working… Continue reading Early childhood
The Madman’s Idea
rediscovered this post today. All these years later, I'm still as "ordinary", whatever that means, but can't tap stuff like this into my super-ergonomic keyboard Like a poor man suddenly gifted with gold, that’s burning a hole in my pocket, I am newly burdened with the riches of an idea, impatient to spend and be… Continue reading The Madman’s Idea
the deck of cards
It was the glorious summer of 1960. I had just left school and the world was mine. I went to a seaside resort, Shanklin on the Isle of Wight. I knew nothing about women, girls I should say: I disregarded any over the age of 21. I got a job washing dishes at a hotel,… Continue reading the deck of cards
Musical Delirium
I’ve come down with “man-flu”. In a woman it would be a simple cold but in a man it’s tantamount to dying and requires tender concern from all the females around. Yesterday morning I drove early to Bracknell; conscientiously completed the vital tasks at Fujitsu on which the team depends. Then I found myself every… Continue reading Musical Delirium
Like Slingblade
I went to the doctor about two unrelated issues. The upshot was, no action or prescription. But I came out of there a new man, with a spring in my step etc, which lasted at least two hours. All week I'd been dreading it: the inevitable physical examination and its possible verdict. The aftermath could… Continue reading Like Slingblade
The art of the possible
Much of what people call angelic inspiration could also be called coincidence, and that is fine by me. The Heavenly Host have not hired me as one of their PR consultants, so far as I know; which does not rule out the possibility that I have taken on the job unwittingly. At least, if we… Continue reading The art of the possible
Christmas Past
es, time can be a spiral, as Cream pointed out in her comment on my last. But it can seem like a circle of recurrence too, as the season evokes emotions long past. I’ve been wanting to write of life’s pathos for weeks now, but today it caught up with me, with an inescapable twisting… Continue reading Christmas Past
What Grandma told me…
In 1964 I became friends with my landlord’s son when he came to paint the window-frames. I was suffering from depression and he recommended a psychoanalyst by the name of Theodore Faithfull, a white-haired gentleman in his eighties, the grandfather of Marianne Faithfull, who had just recorded her first hit, "As Tears Go By". (These… Continue reading What Grandma told me…
The Sacred
It’s taken me a long road to get here, but once arrived it’s perfectly obvious: everyone has their own view of what’s sacred. That’s what causes all the trouble. My garbage dump is your sacred land, or vice versa. You can be “rational” and tell me I’m deluded for what I hold sacred. All the… Continue reading The Sacred
What is life?
I’ve lived long enough to see lots of changes: both in the world and in me. I’ve been astonished in recent months, especially on solitary walks through the countryside, letting memories flow as they please, to discover that in essence I am the same person as I always was. Same person? This is extraordinary. Had… Continue reading What is life?
Magic of day and night
Some years ago I had a vivid experience of the night world. The location was prosaic enough: Cherry Garden Lane in a leafy suburb of Folkestone, late November. But these labels apply to the ordered daytime world. At night, when I stumbled on it first, my footfalls echoed in the lamplit clearing of an archaic… Continue reading Magic of day and night
Responsibility
The Simpsons is hard on religion. Poor Ned Flanders thinks it his Christian duty to persist in loving-kindness to Homer, who’s unfailingly rude and never returns things he’s borrowed. His verbal tics (“Okely-dokely!” Home Sweet-diddly Home!”) are the only evidence of his suppressed urge to go berserk against such an unlovable next-door neighbour. What about… Continue reading Responsibility
Is it just evolution?
Am I the only devotee of chestnut blossom in its close-up form? My interest started in about 1992, when I observed the phenomenon in Brent Lodge Park. After that, an illness prevented me from going out and about much. Walking the earth and admiring the handiwork of its creator (so to speak) became a defiant… Continue reading Is it just evolution?
a wayfarer’s notes 