Mark at 13; a language student. my half-sister Mary at 7 — Is it legal to take stones from the massive deposits lying around the mountains? If it is illegal then who should I contact to collect said stones? — No, it would technically be theft—you'd need to ask the landowner for permission Originally Snowdon… Continue reading Greenhayes Across the Years
Category: where I’ve lived
Happy Birthday Mary
Some pictures of Hastings that you and I will recognize from childhood. Much has changed since, I'm sure. Welcome to Memory Lane! . . .and there's a cave, long abandoned but didn't smell nice when I looked in as a child
My Best Film – Ever
I was 13, staying at Granny's house in Springfield Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. I lived on the Isle of Wight, but sometimes went there in the Christmas holidays. It was a rainy evening when I went to see the film, always on my own - I had no friends there.
Dark Star
Live Dead explains why the Dead are one of the best performing bands in America, why their music touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists. A list of song titles would mean very little in terms of what actually goes on inside the album. Like the early Cream, the… Continue reading Dark Star
A Brush With The Past
I've just finished my first attempt at watercolours since 1958. From the age of 12, I went to King James I School, in Newport, Isle of Wight. It was built as a grammar school in 1613, with some latter additions to accommodate up to 120 boys. Our art master was Mr Bell, a strict disciplinarian.… Continue reading A Brush With The Past
George Santayana
I came across his name when I was 17, but since then I've never seen it again till now: in the same book I borrowed, back in 1959. Despite extensive reading in the spheres of philosophy and religion since then, I've never come the name since, except in the book I borrowed then. I was… Continue reading George Santayana
Housewifery
HOUSEWIFERY is the efficient running of a house, and embraces problems of widely different natures. It includes the problem of running the house economically, seeing that the money available is spent to the best purpose. It includes keeping the house clean, for cleanliness and hygiene are the basis of healthy living. It includes a knowledge… Continue reading Housewifery
Face-to-Face
The ghost of Christine Keeler is returning to public view, in the form of a TV series now on BBC, and a forthcoming exhibition in London, which I heard about through Natalie D'Arbeloff's blog, in which she says Christine Keeler was, in that story, simultaneously absolutely powerless and absolutely powerful. She was neither victim nor… Continue reading Face-to-Face
What looks after us
Posted on Jan 4th , ’21 by Vincent I’ve been wanting to write about the role of angels in my life. Like most words in any language, it’s loaded with baggage going back millennia. Let’s strip off that heavy weight of meanings, leave it in a heap and walk lightly away. I want to go… Continue reading What looks after us
Life-story part 2
"My father died in the war," I used to say, "so I never met him." It wasn't true but I wasn't told any better. In fact he's alive today aged 96, at least he was last year when my ex-wife looked him up, took photos, reported their conversations to my daughter. She found him still… Continue reading Life-story part 2
“All actual life is encounter”
We went to the Island for a long weekend with a couple of friends, staying at Mimosa Lodge, where I took a photo at dawn across the Solent from our bedroom window. Outside it was chilly and neither of us got to take photos, especially as we were acting as guides to our friends, to… Continue reading “All actual life is encounter”
The girl who torpedoed the Government
We met on a summer afternoon in ’59, two 17-year-olds, Pisces born within days of each other. We discovered we had much in common. Both from fatherless backgrounds, lacking any proper home. Each had been granted a single talent, you might say, in compensation for the lack. As her father-figure Stephen Ward said, she had… Continue reading The girl who torpedoed the Government
Pastures New
I posted this when I decided to transfer from Blogger to WordPress on 15th November 2015
If I had stayed in Cowes
We took a short day-trip to The Island. I went to live there aged 12 and left at 18, so it speaks to me in tones of a golden hue, of all that I did there—and didn’t. Especially in Cowes, East and West, where I lived first. It remains much as it was sixty years… Continue reading If I had stayed in Cowes
The Trip
Trip, n(1): 3. A short voyage or journey; a ‘run’. Apparently originally a sailor’s term, but very soon extended to a journey on land. 5. slang (orig. U.S.) a. A hallucinatory experience induced by a drug, esp. LSD. In my last I recalled three authors who pursued the Zen form of enlightenment and tried to… Continue reading The Trip
The Buddha and the Corpse
"What’s that book you’re reading?" asks my neighbour, curiously. There’s a score of us arranged along the cobblestones, leaning against the retaining wall of the public gardens—le Square du Vert Galant. We are proud to be Les Beatniks of Paris, or Les Clochards - the hobos. We’re blocking the public path that borders the dark… Continue reading The Buddha and the Corpse
Horoscope
Jan Mulder is me. I called myself Jan because it was a Dutch version of the Ian Vincent Mulder on my birth certificate ASCEN.—develops an extensive personality-attitude, expressing freedom associated with an urge to explore beyond one’s known environment ASCEN.—gives an analytical, critical personality response ASCEN.—gives underlying confused, self-deceptive and neurotic tendencies —coolly affectionate, friendly,… Continue reading Horoscope
On Fresh Air Alone
Rediscovered and restored the post today. At 2,034 words, it's the longest on this site, possibly has the most pictures and the most rambling narrative If you want to go somewhere and enjoy an undisturbed smoke I suggest the Nineteen-Fifties. If you were actually around at the time, it’s no problem—wings of memory will take… Continue reading On Fresh Air Alone
Borneo journal, January 2000
Took a boat out to the island of Manukan. Even riding in the boat was bliss, the prow banging down on the little waves as we sped along, lightly splashed with spray, hanging on to the rusty rails and the sun canopy supports whose welds were coming apart. One of those rare times when I… Continue reading Borneo journal, January 2000
At sixteen
Here is the text of the essay I referred to in my last, as written in 1958. I don’t suppose it is intrinsically entertaining. To lighten it I’ve embedded some group photos in which my face may be seen, and an aerial shot of the place, Swainston Manor, which became my true home for a… Continue reading At sixteen
Hitching to Heaven
There are things in my past I prefer not to revisit, as mentioned in comments on the previous post. ‘Cult’ comes from the Latin cultus, worship. In certain contexts it refers to “a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister”. I was involved with a cult… Continue reading Hitching to Heaven
In memory of George Whitman, 1913-2011
I once spent a few weeks as George Whitman’s guest in his bookshop opposite Notre Dame in Paris. Today I heard of his death on the news. I’ve mentioned him three times on this blog: in May 2008, May 2009 and Feb 2011*. It has always been difficult to write about the man himself, for… Continue reading In memory of George Whitman, 1913-2011
In the thistle field, at dawn
I lie in bed watching dawn’s rosy fingers light up the house opposite, creeping lower as the hour advances. This street is narrow, its houses joined together (‘terraced’) in a continuous chain on both sides. You’d think there’d be scant room for the low-slanting rays to penetrate. But our house is near the street’s eastern… Continue reading In the thistle field, at dawn
Wittgenstein
Restored to its original form after some unwise revisionism in 2021 The other day I was writing about being nineteen and somehow feeling the same way fifty years later. But it was a mysterious feeling because I could not adduce a single instance of nineteenhood to illustrate my point. So it is a coincidence that… Continue reading Wittgenstein
Reason to Celebrate
Today I celebrate a milestone. It is exactly fifty years since I reached the age of 19, a special number for many reasons, and the last year of one’s teens. This morning I was given a mug bearing the words, “Today is all about YOU ... and there couldn’t be a better reason to celebrate!”… Continue reading Reason to Celebrate
Pygmalion & Galatea
Said Lehane, commenting on my last: “Would it also be sad to say that, through you, I’m kind of infatuated by this girl? Maybe on the way to falling in love with her.” Therein lies a phenomenon not unknown in the world of fiction. If a reader may fall in love with a character… Continue reading Pygmalion & Galatea
The Pocket Diarist
The postman left a package which felt like a small book. Not expecting any such thing, I was delighted; then opened it, and was Deloitted. Deloitte Touche is the current incarnation of a company I left in 1985, known then as Touche Ross & Co, Accountants. I was in their management consultancy, but now I’m… Continue reading The Pocket Diarist
Up through the floorboards
For weeks, probably months, I’ve been bothered by a fugitive stench, hanging in the air at various places, various times, in the kitchen and dining room, not always the same smell. Every mammal knows not to foul its own nest and the sense of outrage at any fouling by others must be etched deep into… Continue reading Up through the floorboards
This blessed plot
If I have a favourite spot it is Cowes, or more precisely five acres overlooking the Solent, the strait which separates the Isle of Wight from the English mainland. I lived there aged thirteen for a year; and again at seventeen, at a different house nearby. Each was a front-row seat at a non-stop theatre… Continue reading This blessed plot
Waiting
Written on May 4th 2009, rediscovered on a search for Apollinaire, French poet On a morning like this I feel a strong call to take the Valley Path (which I’ve written about a few times) on account of the clear sky, the expectant hush as in a theatre when the curtain is about to go… Continue reading Waiting
At Mrs Jenkins’
Last night we watched My Left Foot, in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays the real-life Christy Brown, born to a family of thirteen in a Dublin slum with severe cerebral palsy. To his parents, it’s out of the question that he should be abandoned in an institution, but they cannot afford the home care and treatment… Continue reading At Mrs Jenkins’
Dress code
In my last, I claimed that my long-standing writer’s block was over, and promised to continue my memoirs from where they left off last February at the age of fourteen. There has been plenty of scribbling since then but nothing fit to print. I wanted by some means to indicate “the story so far” so… Continue reading Dress code
Cowes Horizons
In process of being restored When you live in East Cowes, your attention is drawn to horizons. Boats are constantly coming and going. All kinds: ferries, tankers, container ships, yachts, dinghies, powerboats, even fishing vessels perhaps. And it’s not just the visual movement that draws your attention to far away. The first evening, when we… Continue reading Cowes Horizons
News of the fight soon reached the Queen
"One day in 1852, young Freddie Attrill was gathering shell-fish on Osborne beach when another boy came along, told him to clear off and kicked his bucket flying. Indignant, Freddie gave him a thump—only to be told by shocked attendants that he had just hit Albert Edward, Queen Victoria’s eldest son and heir to the… Continue reading News of the fight soon reached the Queen
Only the bicycle shed still stands
It’s fifty-four years since I lived in East Cowes. It has the air of being past its best, but it had the same air in 1954, so you can say it has hardly changed. Fifty-four years before I lived there, Queen Victoria was still alive and she lived there too, in the house she had… Continue reading Only the bicycle shed still stands
Coming back to East Cowes
Now that I’ve got a proper memory card in my camera, I could take hundreds of photos at one time. Yet it’s not my aim to produce a picture gallery or travelogue. It’s more to post letters recklessly addressed to the Universe, like anyone’s prayers to their unknowable God. And when those letters have been… Continue reading Coming back to East Cowes
Pilgrimage to Cowes
I've had my camera two years but only recently realized it can hold hundreds of photos if I put in a larger memory card. Just as well, because I was able to take some beautiful photos of a recent visit to the island where I spent my teenage years, the Isle of Wight. Here's a… Continue reading Pilgrimage to Cowes
Cherrydown (3)
There’s still a ragbag of memories to share with you about the time I spent in that house. If they have any common theme, I suppose it is wonders and miracles. I’m not saying there actually were any miracles: just incomprehensible things. I mentioned in a previous post that my mother started to suffer from… Continue reading Cherrydown (3)
Cherrydown (2)
If you have been following the halting progress of my childhood memoirs on this direct and intimate medium—where it is possible to publish worldwide before the ink has dried on one’s words though ink is not actually used—you might not be aware of just how halting the progress actually is. You might think that Vincent… Continue reading Cherrydown (2)
Cherrydown (1)
Anno 1956 Aetat. 14 This post picks up my childhood memoirs from where Norfolk House (5): Fog on the Solent left off. We moved to a 1930s semi-detached house, “Cherrydown”, 8 Parkhurst Road, Newport [here photographed August 2008—it hasn’t changed since 1956]. For the first few days, my bed was in the dining room, which… Continue reading Cherrydown (1)
Norfolk House 3; the Back Story
” Beth said I was teasing, in my post Norfolk House (2). It’s so long since these memoirs were interrupted (since early September) that I ought to tell you The Story So Far. I have a head-cold today, but let us give it true dignity and call it man-flu. A woman would just get on… Continue reading Norfolk House 3; the Back Story
Norfolk House 1
(continued from here). . . Norfolk house was pulled down long ago. We moved there from Powys House, a tall granite Victorian building which still stands, a mile from Queen Victoria’s holiday home at Osborne. Norfolk House was in West Cowes: an Edwardian mansion with broad veranda and balcony overlooking the Solent, that busy strip… Continue reading Norfolk House 1
Meeting myself
last night's dream: I have just dyed my hair orange: a sort of coppery burnt-sienna. I have decided to take up smoking again after all these years, so I leave the house to buy half an ounce of Golden Virginia and some rolling-papers. Do they still sell tobacco in half-ounces, I wonder. Perhaps I will… Continue reading Meeting myself
Vincent van Gogh
What is it to be oneself? "V" commented on my last, à propos Vincent van Gogh, thus: He was being himself and being well-adjusted to society and his personal circumstances. He became a victim too. Being oneself doesn’t immune anyone from insanity. Well, actually being oneself doesn’t really mean anything. Doesn't mean anything? Sure, it… Continue reading Vincent van Gogh
Why Write Memoirs
Between July and September of 2007, before the move which brought me to my new home, a worker’s cottage in the factory district of a Chiltern town, I’d got into a rhythm of posting chapters of a memoir, on this very blog. I produced a series of vignettes, not always in chronological order, covering my… Continue reading Why Write Memoirs
The school yard
Me; the bullied boy; Rasmussen That aerial photo of the school helped arouse many memories, which in my life seem to be fastened upon places more than upon people. In that respect, I am more of a cat than a dog. I’m more introverted, solitary, not made to hunt in packs and defer to the… Continue reading The school yard
My new school
a: headmaster’s lawn (archery & other photogenic activities for school prospectus & to impress special visitors) b: school yard, cadets' parade ground etc c: bicycle shed d: WCs e: urinals f: Nissen hut (housing three classrooms) g: Headmaster’s study h: Form III (my first classroom) i: Assembly Hall j: kitchens k: (off picture) the Cadet… Continue reading My new school
He was a veray parfit gentil knight
I’d almost completed a first post about my new School, dominated by the personality of its Headmaster. I was looking for a piece of his writing to demonstrate his pompous English style, when I found a perfectly charming piece which demonstrates nothing of the kind. In homage to his memory and to introduce this man… Continue reading He was a veray parfit gentil knight
Home on the Island
I’m still not ready to take you through the gates of my new grammar school and show you round that extraordinary world. But it waits patiently, and when we start, the topic will span five years. In contrast, I was only at Powys House a year.That tall stone mansion had been built in the expectation… Continue reading Home on the Island
New day-school
My most vivid memories are not of the first days at my new day-school, as you might think, but of coming back home each afternoon. I’d been five years at boarding-school and could not imagine a greater luxury. Let out at 3.45, I’d arrive home from a country-bus ride, ravenous. My mother let me cut… Continue reading New day-school
Peter and Johnny
Peter a few years later in school photo Ladies below are the school cooks David Battie, at left, is now an antiques expert on popular TV programmes I was 12 by the time I went to live on the Isle of Wight. The School Magazine of the Newport Grammar School, so kindly given to me… Continue reading Peter and Johnny
meeting and wooing
English divorce in the early Fifties wasn’t a sedate exchange of paperwork between lawyers. If you wanted to contest it—there was every reason to do so—you had to appear in court, and risk your pain being turned into Sunday morning entertainment by reporters from the News of the World. This humiliation happened to my mother… Continue reading meeting and wooing
The Princess Flying Boat
Saunders-Roe Princess Pic: John Howard Worsley Continued from Woodside. Some time after my ninth birthday my mother finally walked out on my stepfather. According to her story it was more like she ran not walked, with pots and pans hurled as she fled down the stairs. But then she was suing for divorce on grounds… Continue reading The Princess Flying Boat
Woodside
Aged eight to eleven, I was often taken by my mother & stepfather to Woodside, on the Isle of Wight, in the summer holidays. We reach the end of the country road. A sign says Woodside House Private and we go through the white gate, down a long winding drive to a red-brick residence, from… Continue reading Woodside
The police arrive
Normally the skirling of police sirens, whilst deafening, passes swiftly enough. This time I subconsciously detected something different. Like a pipe band silenced suddenly by punctures to their windbags, the sirens stopped in mid-skirl, which meant they had stopped at our doorstep. I looked out our first-floor window just in time to see the doors… Continue reading The police arrive
Back Home from Hospital
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 mattress on the floor but I luxuriated in its sparse furnishings and relative comfort. I soon found two… Continue reading Back Home from Hospital
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
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
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
Liberation
In the last year I have been reminded, time and again, by smells and various other stimuli, of a period I spent in Holland when I was five. It was a young age for roaming alone in streets and woods, but that's what I did. I’d been dumped with an unwilling bogus “aunt” in a country… Continue reading Liberation
The price of civilisation
While I was living in Jamaica, I managed to help earn a few pennies by typing and editing literary and academic texts. One such was a student’s philosophy dissertation. She was not an agile writer or an original thinker but she did put together some others’ work in a coherent way, to the effect that… Continue reading The price of civilisation
Suffusion of yellow
Landlord came with 2 tall Poles who piggy-backed up into the loft space and swiftly hatched a plan to mend my leaking roof. So then I went to find a field of yellow (oilseed rape), and its neighbour (such a profound green - the young leaves of corn). A deer with big rump and white… Continue reading Suffusion of yellow
a wayfarer’s notes 