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For now, this is a site under construction. It won’t be finished for some time because I shall be adding stuff as and when it is relevant to do so.

I have been retired for two years now but only recently have I become aware of having entered a state of ‘Blissful Monotony’. I say ’blissful’ because (lucky me) I am recently married to Jeanette, the love of my life. Being only 50 years old she is still a working girl and, since we live happily together, I therefore have long periods of the day with not much to do while she is out slaving over a hot career. At my age its no small thing to be married again; indeed, it was no small thing to end a 45 year marriage 18 months ago. It was while thinking about these two momentous events that the idea occurred to me to set up a website onto which I can publish various stuff, written or photographic, concerning aspects of a life that has been often painful, sometimes happy, occasionally funny and, at times, dreadfully sad…..but always interesting. I think its fair to say that I am being a little vain…..but why not; if it keeps me off the streets and someone else entertained then it has to be a good thing. Really, though, this is for posterity. On the following pages, through the various links, you will find just one of billions of stories.

It should be explained here that any written stuff on this site can be viewed by clicking on the underlined links. Most are Office 1997/2003 documents which can also be opened with the free ‘Open Office’ programme obtainable from here: http://download.cnet.com/OpenOffice-org/3000-18483_4-10263109.html

Some, though, may be in PDF format so you’ll need to download the free Adobe Reader software from here first.

As I hinted, I am 67 years old. The second world war still had two years to run when I was born. Mentally, I’m still Ok but my memory has become a bit suspect. Physically, I am all right too, except for a dodgy right eye that has a tendency to wander when I’ve had a few, and a muffled right ear which has prevented me from enjoying the full effects of Stereo sound. This ….Mums beware…. being the result of measles when I was three. Seen against the standard of what is regarded as poverty now; when all the facts are known of my first 7 years, people of today would surely conclude they were of utter deprivation. Not so. The greater poverty, I believe, is never having enjoyed a three-day-old slice of bread and jam for tea, or never having slurped a knobby of bread dunked in slightly sugar-flavoured hot milk and water for supper. Poverty stories, if that’s what they are, I have many. Experiencing a bit of poverty, I believe, added richness to my life, in that I learned to appreciate what I have now in these more favourable times. There were many, many families like ours after the war, some of whom were very much worse off than us. Rationing! Now THAT was REAL austerity. Coupon was king and money was secondary to it. Into this austere situation my sister, then me and by 1946 my two brothers were born. Time sort of trickled by, then, and inevitably we got ill; as did all the kids in the street. Likewise we got better, then we got ill again and we got better again; we got stronger, such is childhood. Despite what we couldn’t have, didn’t have, I was happy to a delirious degree. I was alive! I could see and hear, taste and smell and also sense to the finest degree a world I had been destined to arrived in.

All to soon, though, the storm clouds gathered and in 1950 there came an event which produced a complete and profound change to our circumstances. The following eight years were, quite frankly, a shit. I was orphaned (not by death I might add) and became a member of what is euphemistically called the Dr Barnardo family, along with my little brothers. See Chapter One of my story.

It is only since the introduction of the ‘Freedom of Information Act 2000’ that I have had full access to all the records and details of my life in the care of Dr Barnado’s Homes. Previous to that ‘Act’ I only had one and a half pages of quite basic and useless information. Now, I am in possession of a huge, comprehensive file with behavioral charts, health details, school reports, photos and letters etc; the whole recording the hard facts of why we were sent away in the first place, with not a little of that information insensitively and coldly pointing out that I was….and not necessarily as a result of that early traumatic experience, but more that I was inherently...a strange child. Indeed, I was a strange child, and proudly so. The reader will have to judge whether I am strange because I say I have experienced miracles, or because miracles have happened, or are still happening to me. Or both. The reader will have to admit that being alive in the first place is a miracle in itself.

Not forgetting, I should add here, the very important role women play in the creation of life, but simply for illustrative purposes only; if we just think about the very earliest of our/my male ancestor; of the millions of spermatozoa he first produced, only one begat the particular male that had the one little wriggly thing inside him that begat the next ancestor...and so on. Of all the billions upon billions of little wriggly things produced by every male member of my ancestral relatives throughout the eons of time, the one, the right one, in some forgotten tender moment, impregnated my mother and nine months later…. out popped I. And now I’m here writing about it. If that ain’t a miracle I don’t know what is.

Sadly, the ancestral line ends with me, for my only son chose a path that precluded him from ever fathering a child. Of all the millions of wriggly things he could have or should have produced, none would escape the tentacular influence of HEROIN.