As I write I’m just past my 67th birthday and I suffer the affliction of most people my age, my memory is selective, not of my own volition though. I always comment that I can remember incidents in 1958 but can’t remember what I had for breakfast and, therein, lays my defence m’lud.
What is contained in the following tome cannot be quantified, qualified or sometimes justified. It may have happened just as I wrote but equally it may be a result of my over fertile imagination and/or wishful thinking. Some will be embarrassed but probably won’t mind too much, at least they’d been remembered and mentioned.
There may be many people out there who feel they can remember some of the stories I have related or maybe been part of them and are ready to contradict them. Of course, that is likely to happen but I would ask you to please remember that those people are more than likely in the same age range as I am and similarly afflicted with the same cerebral issues.
Now, where was I ........... ?
This is a story of my life, albeit slightly embellished and disguised somewhat and I am all too aware that there are few people who would be interested in reading of a possibly above average Joe from the Rhondda Valley but I have been asked many times, OK a few times, to put down on paper what I have done in my 3 score and 7 years so I started writing as a cathartic exercise to help me overcome the emotions that have come with loss and illness and, like my life, once I started I found I couldn’t stop. It is, however, a little more than that, it’s a bit of an insight into my very confused mind how I think, how I behave and also some philosophical observations based on nothing but my experiences in life.
I have always been a bit of a story teller, I love relating old stories and boring people witless. I have also developed, in recent years, a penchant for exaggeration, embellishment or just plain ‘making it up as I go along’, just for the hell of it. A business associate of mine described a business plan I submitted to a Bank for funding as ‘worthy of a Pulitzer Prize for fiction’. I’ve almost lost a couple of friends because of it, unintentionally, but I’m content in the knowledge that none of this was aimed at, or resulted in, deceiving, embarrassing or hurting any individual, at least I sincerely hope not. (HM Revenue and Customs and a whole raft of Banks are excluded, of course).
When I started to write I decided that I would do so in the knowledge that this is unlikely to be published and, therefore, I can say what I like, tell it as I remember with no repercussions, no upsets or lawsuits. I guess that the most I can hope for is that anyone who does read this can relate to my story and perhaps smile a little. The English may not be correct, the structure a little haywire, punctuation and capital letters may appear where they should not but, this is my book, from my heart, written in my way. It was not written to win a Pulitzer or a Booker prize so if you do feel like correcting the writing, please save your breath, I’d just like you to read it not mark it. I did my last English exam in June 1968 and have no plans to do anymore.
If it makes you angry, sad or depressed, I apologise. If it makes you smile, laugh and be happy then I’ve achieved my purpose. If you find anything that offends you please rest assured that I have taken every precaution not to do so but, as Sam Goldwyn once said : “You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time”.
All in all it’s been a good life so far and even if I was called out tomorrow I’ve enjoyed most of it, most of the time and the good times have certainly outweighed the bad.
I can honestly say I’ve lived in interesting times and certainly had an interesting life.
