memory lane

I am getting to an age when remembering things sometimes isn't easy. I can remember vast amounts of trivia and I struggle to forget things that I don't want to remember, but when it comes to recalling important short term stuff, like appointments and what someone said to me 5 minutes ago, I am beginning to suffer lapses. As a result of this i thought I'd make an attempt at some sort of autobiography that I can record here. With virtually no-one to read it, it may seem like a trivial matter or a waste of time but if i write while i can still recall things, then maybe, if I live long enough to forget completely, I'll be able to read it through and relive some of the past experiences. I may not manage to keep it going but I will make an attempt and see how it goes.


I'll start with my mother, who was born in Canada at a place called Oromocto, somewhere near Fredirickton in New Brunswick. Her family moved out to Canada and bought a farm. Immigration was encouraged by the Canadian government, who wanted to increase the population and mortgages were made available to all and sundry in order to buy property.

The family was large and times were very hard. Canada has an unforgiving winter climate and living conditions were cramped and harsh so mother and her twin sister were not particularly welcome arrivals in an already overcrowded house. With five other children to care for the twins became a burden and their parents decided to ship them back to the UK to live with their Aunt and Uncle, a childless couple. Effectively they were given away at the age of four years and an elder sister escorted them back on board a ship.

They were brought up in a strict household and although well looked after, their parents were elsewhere. In Canada, the farm burned down one day and the insurance company refused to pay up on some very dubious technicality. As a result the whole family were homeless and penniless and were forced to return to the UK just as war was growing in Europe.

They rented a ramshackle house in the countryside, surrounded by a tiny woodland and called it Oromocto. And still there was no room for the twins. They stayed where they were and although they got to see their family from time to time, their lives remained separate. And so my mother and her sister grew up with their aunt and uncle, living through the war and the years of deprivation that followed from it.

When she was sixteen, mother met my father. He had been in India during the war and had succumbed to various illnesses as well as developing a huge chip on his shoulder about asian people in general. I know little of his past and little of him, though I suppose they must have loved each other at some stage. ( I am one of three.) She became pregnant pretty soon after the relationship began and she was only seventeen by the time that she gave birth. I guess that I was as unwanted as much as I was unexpected. I don't think I was ever forgiven for my untimely appearance in the world. I am pretty sure that they married before i was born, though there are many that have suggested otherwise in the past.

They couldn't live with the aunt and uncle and so they moved in with the rest of the family in the already crowded ramshackle hut in the woods. There, until I was 18 months or so, we stayed, and my earliest memories were formed. Memories of the smells of pine needles, of too many people, of sunshine and the big outdoors and being left alone.