​JIGSAW

 

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Life is not dissimilar. It is challenging, often frustrating, uniquely personal, and forever in need of motivation towards completion. A host of complex, challenging and varied social shapes, cultural patterns and interactive possibilities woven and worked together over time.

 

For some, the jigsaw is an art form. Pieces carefully separated into colour bands. Others adopt ‘shape-patterns’ piling similar pieces together. Some dive in with corner pieces and edging while others opt for the formation of scenes - individual cameos that form a segment of the whole picture. The geeks of course choose the hard route, perhaps attempting a clear blue sky or a monochrome sea as their immediate goal. Nothing beats the insertion of the final piece and nothing causes more angst than the missing piece!

 

Why now? A short glance at the library biography shelf reveals a tendency to write about ‘My Life’ or ‘My Journey’ when you are forty or under. For many a superstar athlete it is under thirty, with the occasional music celebrity or footballer under twenty! I shun such works with a passion, not because there may be many a wise quote, insight or reflection contained in the text - it just seems too soon, perhaps fuelled by ego, arrogance, or money. I believe life biographies require a reasonable degree of life experience not a few years of fading glory.

   

For almost twenty-five years, sometimes on multiple occasions, family, friends, and complete strangers have ended a conversation with these words, ‘you should write a book.’ Year after year I have procrastinated and resisted. Excuses abound. ‘My memory is awful. I’m not a diarist or journal-keeper. I would exaggerate or lie.’ Perhaps most obvious, ‘I am just an ordinary guy.’

 

Now, in my eighty-first year, I finally relented. Three people, over a period of two weeks, early in 2023, ended our conversation, ‘you should write a book!’ It was time to listen. Clearly, there was enough in the ‘life-story’ to interest a wide spectrum of listeners who had graciously taken time to engage in conversation. I believe in the power of stories. Repeatedly, it was these cameos of life that evoked the most intense response, often with tears, laughter, and wonderment – occasionally disbelief. I am an avid story-teller. I trust the varied stories here will touch lives across a wide spectrum of experience, both in pain and joy, success, and failure.

 

Family

    

I have been married to Ann for over sixty-one years. We met, aged fifteen, at Avenue Baptist Church Youth Club in Westcliff on Sea, Essex. Ann an unofficial ‘Essex-girl,’ me with a broad scouse accent that defied translation! At seventeen, we had our first date and at eighteen I enlisted in the RAF! Not the ideal scenario for a relationship, but love overcame all obstacles and Ann waited. On the 29th June 1963, aged nineteen, we were married. We have three children, Andrew fifty-eight, Tim fifty-five and Sharon forty-seven. We also lost our first and fourth infant children, Gary and Elizabeth, to congenital heart disease. Today they may well have survived, given the progress of heart surgery on young babies, but those options were not possible at the time. We have three grandchildren, Ben thirty, Tierney twenty-eight, and Aaron twenty-four.​