Well, I seem to have created a blog, though I have no idea how it works, or what to do with it. But I expect I will get there in time.
The question is, do we start with then or now? Then was 1934, when I was born in Bristol, before moving gradually over many years to many different places and after ceasing to be a bombed out child during the second world war, I did 58 different jobs before finally becoming self employed in 1977. I'll tell you about it later, gradually. Episodes. Some interesting, some not. I'll try to make them interesting anyway.
Now, I am 75 years old, which is misleading, especially to me. I do not believe it. Impossible! I do not conform to the conventional picture of what constitutes a seventy-five year old. Or I may be deluded and unaware of the fact that I do conform. Nevertheless, be that as it may, I do not dribble and I do not dodder, whatever doddering is. I walk everywhere briskly and am glad to be alive and young at heart. I sometimes feel exactly as I used to feel when I was eighteen. That feeling can be slightly unnerving when I am confronted by attractive young women. We old codgers can still appreciate a heavenly face and a nubile form. But thank goodness I have learned that attractive does not mean available, so I only make a fool of myself in the privacy of my own boundless and improbable imagination. My local paper offers me services for the elderly, but I do not see myself enjoying bingo or ballroom dancing with a sandwich lunch. I don't eat cake or biscuits. I prefer something a bit more spicy. And I don't drink tea or coffee, just alcohol or water.
I was going to say I lead a double life, but actually its a multiple life. In Walthamstow where I live, I am involved in the management of a couple of pubs, for which I do all the paperwork. I deliver the wage slips and wage packets, but with no money in them. I am not the boss, though some of the staff may think I am, because I write letters to the Home Office on their behalf, not necessary, as I keep explaining to them. Lithuania is part of Europe now. But it all keeps my brain active.
I am a retired accountant. Accountants are supposed to be boring. I have no idea where that idea originated. Accountants make their living by knowing everything about everybody else's business. That is not boring, that is like being a voyeur. I have not always been an accountant. I have been other things, about which I will tell in due course, some of them anyway.
Many years ago I was a hotel manager and later a publican, so I know a fair bit about pubs. And I do sit in them now as I always did, and I meet interesting people, and also boring people. I am personally a bit inclined to hold forth, whether interestingly or boringly, I know not, but it can't be too bad because people keep buying me drinks.
Then once or twice a week I tazz off to the West End and don another of my personas as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, where I attend lectures on the Social Brain and education and politics and literature and stuff, and we hobnob with the odd cabinet, or more likely shadow cabinet minister in the bar afterwards. That's sort of nice, and a bit interesting. David Willetts, I think shadow education secretary, introduced me to his son. No idea why. He must have thought I was someone more important than I am. That is part of the joy of being an FRSA, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Unless you are famous and in the public eye, they assume that you might be, so they treat you with respect. Lovely.
Then there's the Poetry Society in Covent Garden. I go there and drink wine and read my poems to the cognoscenti. They listen attentively and sometimes someone will offer a comment afterwards. I've been writing poems quietly at home, mainly for members of my family, for sixty-five years. So its nice to have your poems taken seriously by serious poets, some of them professional. However, they do not rush forward and ask to buy copies of my collected poems, a slim volume entitled "Ipecac and Old Snapshots." More about that in a later blog.
Much more satisfactory is the Poetry Society Waltham Forest stanza which meets once a month in Ye Olde Rose and Crown in Hoe Street, Walthamstow. There everybody reads one poem and then everybody else discusses it, as if you were not there. A very salutory experience. Sometimes I think oh dear me, sometimes wheehe!
Then there's the Society of Authors. I belong to that because of my book. I'll tell you about that later. You get to drink wine, as everywhere I go, but also to hobnob with Margaret Drabble and say hello to Sarah Waters. I sort of know Sarah from the Oxford Literary Festival and book signings and such. We have little chats. You know. My mother was a lesbian, so naturally me and Sarah have things to talk about.
Then there's the being a Friend of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and I'll tell you about that later, and I'll tell you about the Oxford University Society, and going to their do at the House of Lords and meeting two fantasticaly interesting young ladies, one a belly dancer would you believe, and how you now have to go through a security arch thing, after giving your keys and mobile phone to a policeman, who puts them in a tray which bypasses the security arch. So what you need to do is make your mobile phone explosive, that is if you really want to blow up the House of Lords when a load of Oxford alumnii are having a shindig.
Anyway, enough for blog number one. Number two follows when I feel the need to spout further. Watch this space, as they say. Lots to talk about.
