Writing My Memoirs

Advance warning – I am jumping on the bandwagon and I am writing my memoirs!

Hello, hello, hello and a very happy New Year! Have you forgotten who I am? Have you found other gurus to adore and worship? I do hope not. I haven’t forgotten about you, I can assure you. I just felt I needed time to find myself again and, lacking the funds to relocate to California to do this, as some have done, I have been going to the pub instead. It was during one of these visits that I had the idea to write a book about my life, giving all the salacious details about my family and the rows and adventures that we had. Strangely, someone else seems to have had a similar idea…

I recall one particularly vicious argument many years ago in Wales with one of my male siblings – I’ll call him David for the sake of anonymity – about a baked bean. I had been out for the evening, as had David, and we arrived home at about the same time. We were both hungry and decided to heat up some baked beans our mother had left in a pan. We chose to do the whole gourmet scene and added toast as well, arranging the beans artfully on top. We took it in turns to eat until there was just one bean left. I regarded it as MY baked bean because it was my turn to eat, but David snaffled it before I could get my fork into it. And there it was – gone! A red mist came down in front of my eyes and I screamed that that should have been MY bean and that David had always been a selfish so-and-so. I then stormed off to bed, much aggrieved, convinced that I was starving to death because I hadn’t had my full share of beans. I think alcohol may have played a part. I’m still waiting for the apology for stealing food from under my nose.

Then there was the occasion, again in Wales, when youngest male sibling – who guards his privacy jealously, so I won’t call him Trefor – and I had a jumping competition over a low white fence around the next door neighbour’s front garden. It didn’t end well. We had been out for the evening and it seemed a jolly good idea when we got back into our street to see if we could both jump over the little white fence next door before going into our house. I went first and caught my foot on the fence, falling onto the gravel path inside the fence. I was laughing so much I couldn’t get up before Trefor took his turn and did exactly the same thing, catching his foot and falling – but not onto the path. Oh no… he fell onto my head! I think alcohol may have played a part. Still laughing, we went home, but when I got up the next morning, my hair was plastered to the side of my face where it had been scraped by the gravel as youngest sibling landed on my head! I was deeply hurt when I went to the doctor that morning, an old family friend, to ask for some antibiotics and he said, ‘How did you do that? Do I get the truth or the story you’ve probably told your mother?’ He was quite right, of course! (I’ll tell you the tale I told my mother another time.) I’m still waiting for the apology for sitting on my head.

Of course, none of these incidents was my fault – it is other people who made me the victim of starvation and injury. The LSG doesn’t admit to fault – near-perfection is faultless. I will leave you on that note. Plenty more to come!

PS Recollections may differ.