A slug theme has been slithering through my last two posts, leaving the question hanging whether my blocking of cracks in the floor would disturb the migration habits of this humble gastropod. Since I had additionally panelled that corner of the kitchen, fitting the pieces closely, except for one part of the plinth which will… Continue reading Slug life
Ant vs. sluggard
After my last post, you may be wondering what happened to the green slug? Has it yet found its way back into the kitchen yet after being flung to the other end of the back yard? Reader, I have to confess that I’ve blocked the hole where it climbed up to the unkempt corner of… Continue reading Ant vs. sluggard
Bus station
I was waiting at the bus station, that haunt of pensioners, new immigrants and indigent travellers---in short, the dispossessed. I feel at home there. For the first time in fifty-three years, the name of Morton Spencer came back to me. Katie Spencer was my mother’s schoolfriend: vivacious, pretty but still a spinster, still in her… Continue reading Bus station
Belonging
The day after posting my last, I felt cleansed, as a Catholic might feel after a visit to the confessional. Burdens removed, joy restored. I had published only a small selection of what I’d drafted, but had never felt such catharsis from writing, if it is justifiable to link effect and cause in this way.… Continue reading Belonging
The Snowdrop Garden
Today I walked near the house where I lived for 16 years. That’s twelve years longer than I have lived anywhere else in my life. Most of those years I was crippled by a chronic illness and longed to walk the earth freely, so that area has a special poignancy, like the view from a… Continue reading The Snowdrop Garden
As a novice
I live in the poorest quarter of town*, sandwiched between factories, some derelict and some still in use like the one directly across the road. Many of the Pakistani owners of houses like mine have let rooms to migrant workers: hundreds of them are engaged on building a new shopping/leisure complex in town. † Their… Continue reading As a novice
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)
“The Head’s sermon”
Limerick spoof of a sermon delivered at St Thomas’s Church, Newport IW, July 1958, to which parents were invited Improved on Sunday March 1st 2026 Bill McCullagh—we were at school together—has finally sent me a photocopy of an anthology of writings and drawings from that era. Much of it was my work, but the best… Continue reading “The Head’s sermon”
Lion and Thorn
In all cultures there is awe for the power of healing. In Jesus it was a sign of divinity or at least a crowd-puller to his sermons. The wounded lion, from an Aesop’s fable or the legend of St Jerome, is the archetype of a patient unable to diagnose or treat himself. The treatment---extracting the… Continue reading Lion and Thorn
My true self
Paul had spoken of those who accept the received answers of their religion and find no calling to be seekers. Their satisfaction comes from being in the bosom of a congregation. Cool and detached, I had responded that I would not write about the hypothetical experiences of others, for I would not judge them or… Continue reading My true self
What is God?
>Somewhere along the course of my life I became “spiritual”, or perhaps it would be better to say that I realized I could never be an atheist. Till possibly now ... In approaching this I must tread delicately. Let us not excite our brain-boxes with the wording of the “God-question”, not yet. Our brain is… Continue reading What is God?
The New Pub
These photos are specially for Jim, who asked what the ancient farm illustrated in my last post looks like now that it's a pub. I wanted to take some photos of the inside too, but the camera's batteries died. The first photo was taken from the same position as the old one: on the footbridge… Continue reading The New Pub
MaxiRam revisited
This is MaxiRam Castle, code-name for the place where I worked in 2007 from February to August. Each noon I emerged for an hour-long walk and in those seven months, taking no days of leave, I combed the parks and roads and byways, in a sort of sacred ritual. It connected me with my primitive… Continue reading MaxiRam revisited
Fevered interlude
When you have a virus---cold or flu---it comes and goes in waves, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. I woke in the night, thinking about how to continue my memoirs. There’s plenty left in the pipeline. But after age 21 and before 59, there’s a waste land: not an arid desert, but… Continue reading Fevered interlude
Quotes from Hank Bukowski
On Adversity & Resilience "What matters most is how well you walk through the fire". "Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are". "Nobody can save you but yourself, and you're worth saving". "Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives… Continue reading Quotes from Hank Bukowski
Fog on the Solent (Norfolk House 5)
The Solent may have been the busiest sea-lane in the world and the most varied in its traffic. There were ferries between the mainland and our Island; the Royal Navy base at Portsmouth; the transatlantic liner port at Southampton; the Sawley Oil Refinery where tankers plied from the Gulf; and innumerable sailing craft. The Royal… Continue reading Fog on the Solent (Norfolk House 5)
Norfolk House 4: Vignettes
Illustration from a wood engraving by Eric Gill Please note that the Norfolk House story begins at “Nest of Dreams”, so I’ve numbered that “0”. Also that the mention of my “man-flu” affliction introducing yesterday’s piece was a warning that it would be rough. It’s edited extensively now. In “Nest of Dreams” I referred to… Continue reading Norfolk House 4: Vignettes
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
Where Norfolk House stood
As I mentioned in my last, Norfolk House was destroyed long ago. It was crumbling when we moved in, and that was 1955. To write more about my sojourn there is more than the work of a day, but meanwhile, here is the Medina Estuary, showing West Cowes at the far end on the left,… Continue reading Where Norfolk House stood
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
The Call of Nature
Yesterday I mentioned a psychedelic tree, now strangled by ivy, on the corner of Rectory Avenue. I haven't finished telling about that road. One day at Christmastime when my younger children were little, I took them out of the warm house to breathe the crisp fresh air. We used to live nearby and went up… Continue reading The Call of Nature
Problem Solved
from our backyard, facing west I’ve solved the problem that has baffled mankind through the ages. It’s taken me many years and I thought it might take as many years again to explain it to the world, to help others come to the same realization that I have reached single-handed about the true nature of… Continue reading Problem Solved
Writing Instrument
We think we know somebody. They think they know us. It’s nice because we can always be surprised. My son takes present-buying seriously. He went to a hippy shop and toyed with getting me a piece of angel merchandise or a Native American dream-catcher; but fortunately thought better. I received a hastily-wrapped book and opened… Continue reading Writing Instrument
Angel story
This morning I couldn’t park in my own or adjoining streets, so I drove to where I used to live, five minutes’ walk away. I steered into a space next to a red car. The driver got out and came across to speak. I thought he might challenge my right to be there. Signs warn… Continue reading Angel story
The Ventilator Cowl
I lay in a morning bath recalling Mid-December last year, when I used to go wayfaring in stout boots, regardless of the chilly weather and leaden skies: all senses alert like my ancestors the prehistoric hunters. From Gore Hill, I’d look down on Amersham as if I had stumbled on civilization for the first time,… Continue reading The Ventilator Cowl
Clothesline
I might have conveyed the impression in my last that the world has to be put right in order to provide the conditions in which we can live happily. I really think the opposite: that the world has never been better, and never worse, than it is now. We can do our little best to… Continue reading Clothesline
Breakfast Rant
One of the characters in The Secret Agent is Michaelis, the “ticket-of-leave apostle”. Pitifully obese, he finds it difficult to communicate with others having spent his twenty years in jail (judged guilty by association with some terrorist atrocity) developing his own anti-capitalist philosophy. So now he continues his solitude in a cottage provided by a… Continue reading Breakfast Rant
On a Dark and Stormy Night
’Twas a dark and stormy night. We went as planned to The Royal Standard of England, a 900-year-old pub in Buckinghamshire. Above the festooned hops the visitor may descry a skeleton drinker sitting in the rafters, wearing a Roman soldier’s helmet and holding a pewter tankard in his left hand. The pub was hard to… Continue reading On a Dark and Stormy Night
The old telephones
One of the useful functions of retirement must surely be to relive one’s youth. In between comes a time of working-to-support-a-family-and-pay-a-mortgage, which can be irksome to the spirit. It’s easy to forget how hard it was to become adult: to find somewhere to live and pay a month’s rent in advance plus a month’s deposit… Continue reading The old telephones
Not doing and not writing
I haven't delivered on the promise made at the end of my last. I did try to start a memoir of life in the commune, but various technical problems presented themselves. I had difficulty with names. I couldn’t remember some; I didn’t want to use some because the emotion was too strong and telling felt… Continue reading Not doing and not writing
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
Spreading the Word
A few miles from here, the Wycliffe Bible Translators nestle in a spot near the woods, in huts that might have once been an Army camp, but have now been landscaped into a cosy village from which the Good News is spread worldwide. Jesus in his time couldn’t speak loud enough to be heard by… Continue reading Spreading the Word
To him that knocketh
I mentioned yesterday that when I know what I want but don’t know how to get it, I do what comes naturally then give up and ask the Universe. Example 1 For several months now, I’ve brooded on an idea to help others discover who they are via self-expression and good writing. I envisaged a… Continue reading To him that knocketh
Preferring the old telephones
One of the useful functions of retirement must surely be to relive one’s youth. In between comes a time of working to support a-family and pay the mortgage, which can be irksome to the spirit. It’s easy to forget how hard it was to become adult: to find somewhere to live and pay a month’s… Continue reading Preferring the old telephones
Angelic omens
At 8am I heard the refuse collection lorry. I dashed out, for I hadn’t wheeled out a bin to prepare for its arrival. One of the men saw my plight and kindly came back to empty it, so that was pleasing, till I discovered I had locked myself out: no mobile phone, no money, no… Continue reading Angelic omens
Cool for Cats
" /> There’s a heavy frost this morning, with little diamonds catching the sun. I took pity on the black cat that makes eyes at me every day as it sits on the fence and looks in. It is very grateful, wandering everywhere exploring, delighted to be in the warm. Someone feeds it but it… Continue reading Cool for Cats
Ecstasy and unreason
The single-minded pursuit of ecstasy — that’s what my life is for. Perhaps this is not for everybody, but it’s the only thing that works for me and I’m glad I realised it whilst I still have time. I’ll be resuming my memoirs soon, when things (never mind what) are straightened out a little. The… Continue reading Ecstasy and unreason
Hope
In a recent post, “Alchemy”, Rebb attributed a phrase to me: “a song I’ve felt since before time”. I’m sure I wouldn’t have used those exact words, but nevertheless I’ve been looking for its source. It sounds like her paraphrase for an odd experience that I’ve often tried to express in these pages: the sense… Continue reading Hope
Steppenwolf
I’ve been wanting to write but it’s been difficult lately and I was in the dark as to why, or what to do about it. Yes, my circumstances have changed, and as it seemed to my foolishness, they have improved, for now I’m a house-owner and part of a community, instead of depending on a… Continue reading Steppenwolf
Living an Ordinary Life
For some months now, I’ve been drawn to the ordinary. I can’t exactly explain why. Perhaps something has rubbed off from walking the streets in Babylon Town and in this narrow valley. I live not far from a little river which sneaks behind factories, workshops and the common dwellings put up for workers in the… Continue reading Living an Ordinary Life
Being Ordinary
I'm at the internet café again. Perhaps I'll get connected at home soon. So I am going to write something fast. I will try to express something before my time runs out! (I mean before the time I have paid for runs out, not my life, though that applies too.) There have been some news… Continue reading Being Ordinary
Root and Flower
I am drawn to the root of my existence, but it's hidden. If I dig it up to try and take a look, the plant will be disturbed. But then there is the possibility of writing, which is why I'm doing this now. The flower is the root's expression, its way of interacting with the… Continue reading Root and Flower
Our own nest
A bird in a cage sings more sweetly, they used to say; and no one is more lyrical than the exile. Now that I have come home from exile, able to build a nest in freedom - that is to say bought a cosy little house - I've not written a thing. Plenty of excuses… Continue reading Our own nest
Views from our house
Any time now I expect to be cut off from home internet service while Telecomms does its laborious adjustments from one provider to another. I won't be able to upload photos from the internet café so here are two views: the first from the main bedroom window of my new (old) house and the second… Continue reading Views from our house
Settling in
In this post I described how, aged 12, I used to do my homework on a Singer sewing-machine table in the room next to the kitchen, when I first arrived in a Victorian house on the Isle of Wight. Fifty-three years later, I move to another Victorian house - this time a little worker's cottage -… Continue reading Settling in
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
King James I School
At the school there was a Scout Troop in addition to the Cadet Contingent. At some point in my bookish diversions I had read Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys and been seduced by it just like millions of others world-wide. The essence of this seductive power was contained in the bush-hat, the neckwear and the badge-adorned… Continue reading King James I School
The Man who was not my Father
I’m clearing things out and waiting to move to another house and it’s a jittery time for there are delays and dramas, so I cannot write anything coherent. On the other hand I can’t do anything practical till things clarify. Meanwhile I discovered this photo whilst gathering old papers together and deciding what to throw… Continue reading The Man who was not my Father
Some rare photos
It may have been the day I met Marlis, a German girl from West Berlin who came over for the summer. Friends and family were fascinated at this instant liaison. Our subsequent dates away from prying eyes too place on a country footpath near Battle, and in a local cinema. I don't remember any more… Continue reading Some rare photos
Latin Class
Too much is happening in my life at present to write a proper post. The process of remembering schooldays has been action enough, so here is a photo from the archive entrusted to me. It's a Latin class. I hardly remember the master: he must have left soon afterwards. The boy shown highlighted is me.… Continue reading Latin Class
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
Leaving Maxiram
I worked at Fujitsu in Bracknell for eight months, helping develop a system for the Post Office to display videos in the lounge rooms where postmen could relax, chat and get snacks. Back in 2007, the technology for large high-quality video was developing fast. Fujitsu was bidding for a contract to supply and install even… Continue reading Leaving Maxiram
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
Sunlit Ecstasy
It’s August and in these Northern temperate climes it’s a month of smells. I miss the seaside but instead of going there this Saturday I summon its essences from adolescent memory especially the aromas: decaying seaweed, ice-cream, sun-tan oil on young women (fiercely guarded by their muscly young men), sweat, cigarettes, decaying crustaceans, hot dogs,… Continue reading Sunlit Ecstasy
Altering the past
Heavy rain outside the house at sunset A friend points out that the reason I am not getting many comments here is that I don’t reply to many of them. I appreciate them all and am excited to receive them. They are helpful and encouraging. What’s my excuse for not responding lately? Well, the impact… Continue reading Altering the past
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
A Naturist Stepfather
It took little time for my mother and stepfather to discover their marriage was a mistake. The knot was tied in church on a chilly day in January: my sister appeared in September. He was a bachelor of independent means—owning various properties around the town and living off their rents, while she was a woman… Continue reading A Naturist Stepfather
Round and Round the Pampas Grass
Mark was the first child I met on arrival in England aged four, and is the living person I’ve known the longest. We had driven from Tilbury Docks in Grandpa’s old Ford and I slept all the way. I woke to tea in the garden. Mark pointed out his tortoise, which crouched with its… Continue reading Round and Round the Pampas Grass
Fantasies
Recalling materials for a memoir is like being an archaeologist. Sometimes you have to make do with nothing but a handle, or a spout. From this you deduce and reconstruct the rest of the jug whose fragments have been ground small by Time. Painstaking effort must be aided by guesswork, for you don’t have every… Continue reading Fantasies
Bicycle
Long ago, when we were 11 or 12, I received a wonderful favour from Cooksey. We used surnames only at prep school, so Cooksey is all I have: hardly enough to track him down now. His parents were in Hong Kong, but at half-term, when almost every boy went away for the Saturday and Sunday,… Continue reading Bicycle
The headmaster’s wife
Lying awake at night, it’s as though I can draw back a curtain to expose deep alcoves of memory. It takes a little perseverance. Suddenly I recall that “perseverance” was a favourite word of Monty Brummell-Hicks, the scary headmaster of my prep school, that place I was sent for ten or twelve weeks at a… Continue reading The headmaster’s wife
The angry caning
From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! I’ve hinted that my headmaster, Montague Brummell-Hicks, viewed me as a boy in need of control and correction. He seemed to have dark suspicions of my character and this irked me from the earliest days, for I saw there were other boys, more handsome and sunny of disposition, whom… Continue reading The angry caning
Days at boarding-school
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
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
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
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
Privacy—and Fearlessness
Rediscovered from perpetual-lab.blogspot.com, now defunct, published July 25th 2007 The essence of a blog, or so I’ve thought till now, is to speak openly to the entire world. Just as in a book, except that using book technology someone pays to enter the world within the covers. So why have I suddenly become “scared of… Continue reading Privacy—and Fearlessness
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
a wayfarer’s notes 