One of my earliest memories of writing, as a 4 or 5 year old, was the workbook we had at school which consisted of (I guess) a passage and questions on it. I just remember the questions usually had one or two lines for an answer, but occasionally there would be a 4,5 or 6 liner, and even at that age I'd think (the 5 year old equivalent of), you're 'avin a laugh...I can remember the feeling of tiredness and despair which would come over me as I looked at that large empty space and thought, 'you want me to write HOW much???'
The idea must have come upon me at some point around then that people actually wrote whole BOOKS...they must be MAD, I mused...hey ho.
Where does your earliest memory come from? (Discuss...). I can remember waking up in my cot occasionally in the night in my parents' bedroom and thinking, gosh it's DARK in here...
At some point it must have dawned on me that there was actually a difference between me and my companion the beagle, older than me by 6 months, and the fact that he had 2 tails, one at the back and one at the front, whereas I only had the one at the front, was perhaps significant after all...
And what about those stories from the war, which was what I heard (literally) at my mother's knee, and which have fascinated me all my life...these things called mines, which I pictured as something like sea urchins from her description, and certainly the bombers coming over and the air raid shelters. From my Dad the story of going down to the shelter with his Nan when the woodyard at the bottom of her garden was set alight by incendiaries and returning next morning to see the house being dampened down by the fire brigade, his nan being phased only by the fact that somewhere between the house and the shelter and back she'd lost a slipper.
And the stories from his evacuation to Stratford on Avon from Birmingham, living in the Old Town where you'd pay a fortune to live these days. Apparently at one point he and two others decided to make a dash back home to Birmingham and, as it was deemed too far to walk, managed to procure...one and a half pairs of roller skates. Ok, they decided, one skate each and they'd propel themselves as if on a scooter. Which was fine until they reached the brow of the Bishopton Hill at the Dun Cow where one lad's skate broke and they decided it was too far to walk and turned back.
And my Mom's boyfriend Fred who was training to be a bomber pilot and was killed when his C.O. demanded they repeat a landing in awful winter weather when they'd only just got down in one piece the first time.
My first trip to Germany at the age of 19 I enjoyed for many reasons, and one of them was hearing the war stories of my now dear friends over there.
Anyways, I guess this is enough to be going on with for a while...see y'all when the Muse next strikes!
