Intimations of Mortality - 1
Being a series of random but loosely connected musings on my life, the world I have lived in and what the future - what's left of it - may hold.
Looking back now - when there is certainly more to look back on than forward to - I can say with a high degree of certainty that it was all about dreams. Having dreams. Being dreams. Living dreams. Creating dreams. Fulfilling dreams.
I was born and raised in a northern English industrial inner city. Grey brick terraced houses opening directly onto grey pavements. Front steps that were no longer polished. Front doors that were no longer painted. Back then, grime was a popular colour in our part of the world. Single glazed wooden framed sash windows that no longer quite fitted, that rattled and jammed.
Grey people, too. Skin, hair and nails, as it said on the bottle in Boots the Chemist. All grey. Fifty shades of grey was our local doctor's manual for measuring the time between your appointment with him (they were all hims in those days) and your appointment with the grim reaper.
And the clothes. My mother had a dark blue frock and coat for best wear. Everything else was grey. My father had two grey suits. One he wore to work, with a grey shirt. One he wore at weekends, with a cream shirt. That shirt was considered quite dashing. Otherwise, the men of our street and of the surrounding streets presented themselves in an amorphous grey mass.
Except for those Winter Saturday afternoons when the local football team was scheduled to lose at home. Necks were adorned with the bright tribal colours of inherited fandom. Voices raised in hopeful hymns to heroes past. The expectant shuffle to the ground before the three o'clock kick-off would later rewind in familiar disappointment.
Amongst all this greyness, we were not poor. Father was never out of work, as far as I know. We ate every day, family breakfast and family tea. I had dinner in school. Mother kept house and otherwise kept herself busy. To me, even at quite an early age, her life seemed devoid of purpose. She and father tolerated one another, it appeared to my young eyes, without any great affection.
This was my world. The world I dreamed of leaving behind, by any means at my disposal.
Looking back now - when there is certainly more to look back on than forward to - I can say with a high degree of certainty that it was all about dreams. Having dreams. Being dreams. Living dreams. Creating dreams. Fulfilling dreams.
I was born and raised in a northern English industrial inner city. Grey brick terraced houses opening directly onto grey pavements. Front steps that were no longer polished. Front doors that were no longer painted. Back then, grime was a popular colour in our part of the world. Single glazed wooden framed sash windows that no longer quite fitted, that rattled and jammed.
Grey people, too. Skin, hair and nails, as it said on the bottle in Boots the Chemist. All grey. Fifty shades of grey was our local doctor's manual for measuring the time between your appointment with him (they were all hims in those days) and your appointment with the grim reaper.
And the clothes. My mother had a dark blue frock and coat for best wear. Everything else was grey. My father had two grey suits. One he wore to work, with a grey shirt. One he wore at weekends, with a cream shirt. That shirt was considered quite dashing. Otherwise, the men of our street and of the surrounding streets presented themselves in an amorphous grey mass.
Except for those Winter Saturday afternoons when the local football team was scheduled to lose at home. Necks were adorned with the bright tribal colours of inherited fandom. Voices raised in hopeful hymns to heroes past. The expectant shuffle to the ground before the three o'clock kick-off would later rewind in familiar disappointment.
Amongst all this greyness, we were not poor. Father was never out of work, as far as I know. We ate every day, family breakfast and family tea. I had dinner in school. Mother kept house and otherwise kept herself busy. To me, even at quite an early age, her life seemed devoid of purpose. She and father tolerated one another, it appeared to my young eyes, without any great affection.
This was my world. The world I dreamed of leaving behind, by any means at my disposal.
61-69, F
