But now I’ve had a change of heart and decided that I should write a mercifully brief version for transmission via the blog. That way it’s unlikely that anybody will read it, and if the odd person or two does, it won’t interrupt the prosecution of their life for more than about ten minutes. So here it is:
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The first five years of my life are a mystery to me. I was born into a working class family in an industrial area of the English North Midlands. My father was a bus driver and my mother a housewife, and when I was 5½ years old they separated acrimoniously. I don’t remember the separation and I remember hardly anything of the five years leading up to it, but my mother told me later that the break upset me mightily, and so I suppose my mind protected itself by blocking the whole thing out. Is that how it works? I don’t know.
And then my step-father dropped into my life. He was, I later realised, something of a sociopath whose interests and priorities amounted to little more than money, authority, status, violent entertainment, and the pursuit of unwilling females. In fairness I have to say that he wasn’t all bad, just mostly. And we had absolutely nothing in common.
At age seven I started primary school and sank straight to the bottom of the class, which didn’t help to improve my already low self-esteem. And I backed off from the bullies, which added a feverish and deep sense of shame to the poor picture of myself which I’d already formed. I remained at the bottom of the class almost to the end of my primary school years, occasionally exchanging rock bottom place with one Malcolm Viggars, who had – or so I presumed – what we would today call ‘learning difficulties.’ But then something interesting happened.
My stepfather was unhappy with my poor performance at school and threatened to disown me if I didn’t improve. He bought a scholarship primer full of exercises and forced me through several pages of it every night until I could hardly keep my eyes open, and the torture worked. In the final term (semester) my class position jumped from 31st to 8th and I was granted the prize for progress. It was the first prize I’d ever received, and going up onto the stage to collect my book was a proud moment.
Maybe that moment made the difference because I went up into high school and blossomed. By the end of the second term I was top of the top class in my year, and stayed there for the duration of my school days. By the time I was sixteen I was head boy, head prefect, vice captain of the school rugby team, a member of the school cricket team, and a pivotal influence in the school orchestra. When a pupil had to represent the school at some function or other, I was the chosen one. When a portrait of the city’s Chairman of the Education Committee was to be presented to him at Speech Night in my final year, I got the job. I made far more trips onto the stage to collect prizes than anybody else. (One teacher even apologised for not giving me more prizes, but said they had to spread them out a bit. I nodded acquiescence of course.) When we staged a play based on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales I played not one starring role, but both. (They weren’t on stage at the same time, you see.) In short, it’s no exaggeration to say that I was the school’s star pupil. And throughout all this, the bullies always backed down from me, although I’ve no idea why.
So did all this heady success and the concomitant accolades improve my sense of self-worth? No, it just made me arrogant, which is why I wasn’t much liked. Can’t blame them, can you? The combination of arrogance and low self-esteem does not encourage the development of fraternal relationships, as a certain senior politician – who is even older than me – should have learned by now.)
But then everything changed again when my stepfather flatly refused to allow me to continue my schooling and head towards university. ‘I’m not paying good money to keep you sitting on your fat arse in a classroom,’ he said, his face turning white and his whole body shaking. ‘You’ll get a job and earn a living like everybody else.’ And so I did, but not without suffering a severe assault on my sense of justice.
I’d been bullied onto the ladder of success; I’d climbed it well, but was only half way there; and the very man who had done the bullying was now kicking me off it again. It had the effect of fostering both indignation and apathy. And so I began the search for a place on a different but equivalent ladder, and found it in the Royal Navy. With what qualifications I’d earned at 16, I could join the highly educated young men learning to become naval officers. It was a different scheme with more limited promotion prospects, but at least the number of gold rings on the sleeve was the same. A lieutenant was a lieutenant whichever scheme he was on. I made the application, undertook the many and varied tests successfully, and sallied off to be a naval officer.
It didn’t work out. I loved the sea, I loved seaboard life, and I loved the three months we spent visiting places of note on the north-eastern edge of North America. What I couldn’t tolerate was the suffocating pressure of control. The first stirrings of the loner gene had begun to operate when I was around 11, and by the age of 17 it had become central to who I was. I applied to resign and my application was accepted. I returned home and began enjoying what teenagers are supposed to enjoy: the parties, the girls, the camp fires, the heady scent of the newly forged youth culture, and persuading my body to tolerate large quantities of alcohol. But that didn’t last long either. I committed an indiscretion which forced me to leave home and settle down with a married woman seventy miles away. And there was the impending birth of my child to take into consideration.
But I still hadn’t given up hope of getting back onto the ladder where I felt I belonged. After working at labouring jobs for a while to keep just sufficient money flowing, I took a job as a travelling salesman. It carried the benefit of a company car and a promotion ladder, but it never occurred to me that a sales job required a particular type of attitude and personality, a type to which I was a complete stranger. And so I failed miserably. I kicked the job into touch – losing the shiny new company car, of course – and was unemployed for the next four moths.
And then I saw a job advert for a clerical position in the admin department of a young offenders’ corrective institution. My sights became trained on the prospect of another career ladder, the importance of which still seemed evident to me, and so I applied and got the job. When I’d served sufficient time I took the exam for promotion to the executive grades and passed easily. Transfer to HM Customs and Excise to work as a revenue inspector followed about a year later, and I moved back to my home town to take up the post. I stayed there for eleven years.
But a significant change in my attitudes and perceptions began to take root, slowly and almost without notice at first, but becoming more entrenched as each year passed. By the time the eighth year came around I had already had two major relationships, both of which had ended with acrimony, and was married to a third. And I was feeling serious misgivings about the job. My bosses were telling me that if I would only apply a little more effort, I could easily achieve several promotions up the executive ladder. I wasn’t remotely interested. I’d suffered the attitudes and practices of bureaucracy and the hide-bound mentality of bureaucrats long enough. It no longer suited me any more than it had suited me to be a cog in the military machine or a false-faced travelling salesman. I needed the freedom to let the real me express itself.
I remembered that, as a boy, I’d had a fleeing interest in photography, and that interest began to ingratiate itself into my consciousness with gathering strength. I bought good equipment; I bought the textbooks used for photographic studies in art colleges; I took out every book I could find in the library covering technique, theory, and composition; and I made a point of practicing and taking notes every single day. What I couldn’t do was discover how to make the transition from a secure job with regular pay in the Civil Service to an insecure adventure as a freelance photographer. I did, after all, have a mortgage, a wife, two cats, and a much-loved dog to consider.
And then fate took a hand and the great sea change began in earnest.
In November one of my cats was killed on the road. The following June the other cat succumbed to feline leukaemia. In October my dog – my beloved best girl – had been struggling and weakening for months with an aggressive tumour in her throat despite every treatment available, and so I had to say goodbye to her. And my marriage had little left to commend it. In January I began an affair with another woman, and when I admitted it to my wife she took over my photographic studio as her new sleeping area. She’d already had a couple of minor affairs herself, but saw them as no threat since she didn’t take things as seriously as I did. Four months later she left the marital home and went to live with an archaeologist from Bristol.
That was the final straw. I realised that my opportunity had arrived to leave the bureaucrats and the tram lines behind and do what I wanted to do. I put the house on the market knowing that even after splitting the equity 50:50 with my wife, I would have a reasonable sum to act as working capital. It hurt a lot because that house was the favourite of all I’d lived in, before or since, but it had to be done. And so the change from left brain to right was given free rein to guide the further progress of my life. I was 35.
The next stage may be summarised briefly: A new relationship which turned out badly, a move from the English Midlands to the wilder, far north-east of England, a six year career in landscape photography consisting of two years building, two years thriving, and two years slipping back into oblivion consequent upon the policies of the hideous Mrs Thatcher. A further period of unemployment followed inevitably and I moved back to my home town. But at least my self-esteem had taken a step up.
The house I moved to was a ten minute walk from a regional producing theatre – a fully professional set-up which employed the actors, the production staff, the catering staff, the admin staff, and so on. I soon learned that although these people were full time professionals, the organisation worked on a tight budget and used volunteers to do the usher work. There was also a voluntary body which organised various events and activities designed to raise funds. I joined both, of course. What else did I have to do except look though the job adverts in the local paper and learn computer skills at the local college?
After a while I became known, and one particular company of actors took me under their wing and made me effectively an honorary member of their clique. And so began a period of parties, games, sleepovers, and smoking pot late into the night. It should come as no surprise that I was able to relate to theatre people far better than I had ever been able to relate to the bureaucrats in the civil service. A fifth and last partnership came into view and took root, lasting a little longer than the others before ending without a hint of acrimony. And I began the writing of forty four short stories, one novella, and a short novel. About half the short stories were accepted and published by various members of the indie press, but the two longer works had to be self-published. I never became famous or rich.
The theatre work ended when I took the administrator’s job with an inner city charity. I didn’t enjoy it because the environment was hostile to my nature, and I wasn’t entirely sorry when Mr Blair’s policies changed and the funding for my job was removed. I went back to checking the paper for job adverts until I was able to claim my civil service pension early, and that changed everything because I was finally able to relax and live in permanent school holiday mode.
By then I’d written all my fiction and moved to this house in the lovely Derbyshire Dales, and that was the point when I started this blog. Living here hasn’t always been as pleasant as you might imagine, for several reasons, but it could have been a lot worse. The move to this house coincided with a catalogue of health issues, including a stage 2 cancer which had to be removed, and the change in my mindset led me a long way down roads of enquiry which had only been simmering before. I consider I’ve either learned a very great deal or nothing at all, depending on which way you look at it.
So how is life for me now? Slow, mostly quiet, difficult at times, extremely difficult at others, and occasionally quite satisfactory. The roads my mind has walked since living here have been bumpy and achingly jarring at times, and my perception of the human race has dimmed somewhat. My loner gene has gained in strength, and yet I still feel lonely at times, and the gaggle of blog correspondents who used to keep me connected have all gone. Dreams are frequent and often disturbing, morning moods usually scream at me to get out of this world, but the days are mostly tolerable and the god of small things sometimes encourages me to smile benignly. The health issues, apart from the cancer, are still with me and occasionally embrace a new member of their fraternity. Fortunately, they don’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to lay me out for the count, but I’m physically so much weaker than I used be, my energy levels are falling alarmingly, my sense of balance is waning, and my mental acuity is definitely not what it used to be. But I still have more hair than my natural father had at my age, even though it’s not a great deal.
I’ve grown closer to my family but hardly ever see them because they’re too far away and none of us has transport. My ex, Mel, is my only friend and we talk on the phone every other week. I never go a single day without thinking of the Lady B several times and that can be troubling. I still haven’t worked out why the Lady B is so prominent in my consciousness, but she has been so for a long time and continues to knock metaphorically on the door frequently. I’ve become very fond of most animals – especially dogs, horses, cats, and cows – and young children. I suppose it’s because they’re more transparent than adult humans, but the study of those humans is still a major form of mental activity.
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I think this needs to stop now because I set out to write a blog post, not a weighty tome. A whole bagful of detail remains unrecorded, but that’s good since nobody would be interested. (I started to read a biography of Sylvia Plath recently and gave it up because it was too full of insignificant detail and was boring me.)
If anyone has made it this far, thank you very much and may your God be with you. I intend to continue the blog as long as we both shall live.
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