From the bookshelves 82

     Smuggling on Chesil Beach in the eighteenth century. Our teacher read this story to us in our last year of primary school.

Is the boy father of the man?

Five years old and the book thing has started. I think the book must have been the property of the photographer. We learned to read from the Janet and John books at school. I not only learned to read but also that books are sensory objects. Paper in daily life is usually quite friable fragile like news-print; proper book paper is durable. I look as though I'm not quite sure about how I should sit; was the chair too high for my short legs? I hadn't yet become obsessive about holding a book firmly by the spine. Not so much smiling as squinting into the sunlight.

Big Mountain, Whitefish, MT. 1996

Forty years on I'm still squinting into the light but I have the beard I always wanted.

Memory - stub

"The boy stood on the burning deck . . . " but I was standing on a chair and it wasn't burning; I was on fire with shame and embarrassment. Was this a punishment of some kind or was the class set an assignment to each tell a story to the class? I can't remember. What I can remember is that prickling sensation of panic rising up my legs to my reddening face as I squirmed thinking desparately of what to say.

Australia was a fascination for us then what with the £10 assisted passage for emigrés to that land, The Flying Doctor series on the wireless and learning about the peculiar animals of the outback, including the wallaby, duck billed platypuss and wombat. What a lovely word: wombat; I wandered what the animal looked like. I'd listened to a tale about a wombat on the wireless a few days before. What little television I saw was at friends' houses; I knew none of my contemporaries listened to the wireless so I retold the tale of the wombat escaping a bush fire . . . knowing it would be fresh for them. And thereby I esaped burning embarrassment.

Little boy . . .

Why did I start writing a blog? Why such a title? To find out who I am by telling the world who I think I am? I can tell the world about the dreamy, shy little boy I think I was. I hated injustice. I thought the world could be fair. I knew injured wild animals had to be killed. I wondered why babies had to be born in a hospital. I thought hospitals were for dying. I thought men had breasts to be able feed babies in an emergency. I was scared of the dark. That was the inner me. I had permanently dirty knees. I would click and cluck my tongue. I would grind my teeth. I loved picking at scabs and my nose but I'm too polite to tell you my favourite cuss words. I was a scrapper so long as I chose the fight. I hated being teased (still do). I hated seeing weaker children being picked on. I chose the outsiders to be members of my patrol in Scouts. I was neither the first nor the last picked when sides were chosen for games and I sometimes did the picking. I'd scrump pears and apples, cherries and plums; when mum asked why I had cigarettes in my pocket I said,"For smoking". I joined in the boyish games to see who could pee the highest, spit the furthest. I loved the prettiest girl in the class and dreamed of carrying her away on a great white stallion. I know I was a wriggle britches because my trousers seats' were soon shiny and thin if not torn or worn through. I'd run my sleeve along dusty window sills, and jump in puddles. I'd walk miles alone. Telling stories was natural . . .