Writing a Memoir

by Caroline Gaden ©

You ALL have memories and you can all write those memories down… you just need to get organised and DO IT. Even if you find writing physically difficult don’t use that as an excuse, use a tape recorder and get someone else to do the transcription.
You do not need to have a university degree, you do not need to have studied English literature, all you need to be able to do is find the time and the commitment to do it.

A memoir is not an autobiography, nor is it a family history but it may include elements of both….
• it can select a shorter time frame,
• it doesn’t have to be in chronological order,
• it doesn’t have to be so fiercely accurate… incidents can be merged to help the story telling
• it is your memory and your perspective and so may differ from the memory of your brother/sister/spouse/parent … no one is ‘more right’ or ‘more wrong’. You can write that you saw an incident one way but your sibling had a different perspective, putting all perspectives in will enrich the story.

Write daily…. Just 10 minutes per day to get the flow going - like a jogger who does a bit every day; they don’t expect to run 20 km from day one, without any training.

We can all tell stories
Is my story worthwhile? We talk ourselves down
Where do we start? We all find excuses to avoid writing
You do need time to daydream and drift, to let things settle and allow ideas bubble up… that’s the way the brain and long term memory works.
It may be useful to attend workshops or discuss your writing with other writers.

Write about what you’re burning to write about first.
May be useful to map out your story, the bits you think are important. Major turning points in life will be major turning points in the story eg migration or marriage or birth or death of major character.
• may help to construct a ‘mind map’ or to ‘draw your life’
• may help to draw a time line for your life … world events may trigger memories.
• may help to write your own flyer listing your achievements i.e. blow your own trumpet!
• meditation may help the memory to surface and relive the senses you felt at the time.

What chapters could you uses to write your life story?
• Chronological chapters eg Birth, Childhood, Schooldays, Work, Marriage
• Person chapters eg My parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, husband, children, friends, work colleagues
• Place chapters eg houses, villages, towns, cities, countries where I have lived
• Events chapters eg Christmas, summer holidays, birthdays
• Theme chapters
     Family I have loved
     Friends I have endured
     Places I have lived
     Schools I have hated
     Dogs I have adored
     Horses I have worshipped

Look at your list of chapter heading, put them on a list in a hat, draw one out, write about that for your 10 minutes, when all are done you can then look at the best order and linkages.
You may use diaries and letters for inspiration and support if you are lucky enough to have them.
Have a notebook and pen always handy for the things you are writing about, to jot down that sudden memory that arrives unbidden.

Have another notebook for the things you can’t write about… keep under lock and key, it’s for your eyes only, may be painful, may hurt others, not for publication but may help ‘unblock a blockage’.
Must be compassionate towards yourself and you need support.

You need to transport the reader into another world
• Use your senses to visualise the place or atmosphere ie a description
Imagery can help ...begin with image of eg a beach- you are walking along it. What are you feeling? Touching? Smelling? Tasting? Hearing? Seeing? Allow your senses to help with descriptions. [Imagine you are blind, helps bring out other senses eg sound, touch]
• You may use a photograph to trigger a memory. Describe the people in photograph, their dress, who they are, their personality, where and when and why.
• Use a piece of jewellery, an ornament, a medal, a letter or a diary entry to trigger a story
• To evoke an era use brand names [eg I was hoovering the floor] or refer to brands of food of the time, or things no longer with us [eg Zam Buk for cuts], or TV/Radio programs of the time eg Zoo Quest for BBC TV in the 1950s.
• May eventually need to research to ensure you have the detail correct eg the specific date of Queen’s coronation, the exact year the FJ Holden was released, but do this later, don’t stop the flow of writing.
• I kept six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew
Their names are What and Why and When and Where and How and Who [Kipling]

Writers voice
It is a confident voice, your ‘alter ego’ who is writing.
Step into the character or the narrator, reader needs to emphasise with that person
• May adopt the voice of a parent, a teacher, an environmentalist, an ‘expert’.
• May adopt the voice of child especially if writing of the times when you were a child [eg ‘Good morning Mrs Hardcastle’.]
• May need to put yourself in another persons shoes - to provide understanding of both characters and situations
• May need to detach yourself if you have painful memories to write about… ‘The little girl did XY’ rather than ‘I did XY’
• Your style may be chatty, entertaining, informative, detached, create shock, or ‘in your face’.
• It may be as a family member eg Great Aunt Lucy, so anyone who knew her would immediately recognise the phrases used and be able to hear the tone of voice.
Humour and exaggeration are both useful tools

Use description to ‘show, not tell’ ie show the reader your mother ‘thumping the oak dining table before bursting into tears’ rather than just telling them your mother often cried out in frustration.
Have a go at writing as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult. Play around with tenses
Whose voice are you using? Be a story teller!

Moving through a story
1. Summary
Aerial shot, not a lot of detail but covers a bit area or big time frame. Covers a lot of time but all seen from a distance, none is more important than another eg can do a 10 year period in which you don’t want to cover much detail
2. Scene… shorter time span, a close up, a specific time location, can give conversation, expressions. Dialogue is a great way of getting information across in a short time as there’s no long page of description and you can get to the grist of the story.
3. Musing … a commentary, looking back, compare then and now, bridge eras/time, may use a different type face, can summarise a long time in a paragraph and make a final comment eg It’s taken me 30 years to understand….

Your audience
What I really want to say is that these are my memories written especially for …eg family so they understand why I am so eccentric; wider audience people with an interest in a particular time, place

Potential Subjects-
Christmas. Summer at Grandma’s house. The mulberry bush. Holidays. My 10th birthday
World events eg the day man landed on the moon. The neighbour from hell.
Work, sport, hobby, games we played School. Friends. Family. My first motor bike.
Intense moments of pain. Intense moments of joy. Intense moments of fear.
The year my father died. The year my parents separated. My favourite pet.
The day I broke my leg. When I fell off the ….. Why I love…….
My black eye …. The day I was caught in a rip. My first day at Yoga.

GOALS
Write your goals down!
Bite the bullet and set the timetable
Be obsessed and write 10 minutes every day
What would you like to write in the next month, six months, twelve months?

Further reading
Remember when - How to unlock your life story John Hockney
Writing the Memoir Judith Barrington
The pocket muse, ideas and inspiration for writing Monica Wood
Growing up between 1900 and 1920 Grace Horseman
Growing up in the Thirties Jane Madders & Grace Horseman
Growing up in the Forties Grace Horseman
Writing a non-boring family history Hazel Edwards
Some Memoirs to Read
The Bean Patch Shirley Painter, written as if the child was not her
Sea Rhymes with Me Pamela Mathers, adventures in her 70s
Airmail Kate Fitzpatrick, lots of letters over the years
Misadventures Sylvia Smith, one chapter per person
The colour of water James McBride, written with and about his mother
The horses too are gone Michael Keenan, a particular period of adversity-drought
Almost French Sarah Turnbull, adapting to a new country/culture
The pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, non-judgemental - surviving WWII
Mao’s last dancer Li Cunxin, childhood in a Communist culture
A Celtic Childhood Bill Watkins, laugh out loud funny stories of childhood
There’s a bear in there [and he wants a Swedish].. how my career went from Play School presenter to brothel receptionist Merriday Eastman, lots of dialogue if you can get past the bad language.
Any memoir you can find as it will give you some ideas as to what will work best for you.

The door slammed....

           

The door slammed and the taxi eased into the stream of Heathrow traffic.

“Where to Guv?”  the driver demanded.

“Westminster Abbey, we need to go to the Dean’s office”

“Been to London before?” he asked, taking in the Australian accent.

“No” replied the tall red head.

“Yes” butted in his blonde partner knowing exactly what would happen if the driver took advantage of their having no idea of directions. It was bad enough that they were jet lagged and high on adrenalin. The flight had been shortened by an hour due to an engine shutdown and aborted landing in Munich. For the past two hours she’d been haunted by memories of the 1958 Munich air crash when she’d lost seven of her adored Manchester United football team. She was in no mood for a tour of London’s sights.

The taxi sped up as they hit the Great West Road heading into The City.

“Bet we do a Cook’s tour past Buckingham Palace” she whispered.

They wound their way through Kew and Hammersmith and past Hyde Park. Suddenly Knightsbridge ended, a couple more right turns and there was The Palace.

“Knew it!” but then it was only another two streets and Westminster Abbey, tall and imposing, brooding and ancient, was ahead.

She’d been here before, almost nine years ago, on 29^th January 1965 to be exact, when she’d queued for over an hour in bitter wind and rain, slowly wending her way from Lambeth Bridge to Westminster Hall to file silently past the catafalque of Sir Winston Churchill. It was an image etched into her memory. The coffin was on a bier seven feet high, covered in black velvet with silver trim; the carpet was garnet coloured; the Union flag draped the casket with his Knight of the Garter insignia and medals atop a black velvet cushion. Five soldiers stood as a Guard of Honour, heads bowed and hands on sword pommels. The changing of the guard was done every 15 minutes with such precision yet with no audible commands. It had been an incredibly moving experience, seeing so many people quietly expressing so much emotion, so much love, especially the older people who had lived through the war. As Head Girl she was representing her Yorkshire school, along with the Head Boy and Principal and on their way back to King’s Cross railway station they had made a quick visit to the Abbey. 

This visit to Westminster was also full of emotion, but it was of happiness not mourning. Her companion now was her Australian fiancé and they had to go to the Abbey to collect their Special Marriage Licence. They were not going to have enough time in England for the three Sundays needed for the Banns to be called, so they’d had to apply to the Archbishop of Canterbury for a Special Licence.

She chuckled as she thought of the Application Form. “Father’s names” had proved to be no problem, but “Father’s occupations” would have raised a few eyebrows in the lofty realms of the Church of England hierarchy. Her Dad had sold his business to run a delightful English country pub. His Dad had retired from work and was painting wild Australian landscapes, so we had the “daughter of an innkeeper” marrying “the son of an artist”. The fact that the two young people both had university degrees and professional positions was deemed irrelevant.

The Letter of Recommendation from the local Parish Priest had also caused some mirth. It had been written by the husband of a fellow teacher. He was one of the most likeable and down-to-earth Anglican Ministers they’d ever met, a former boiler-maker who had gone into the Ministry in his thirties. He had a dry, wicked humour and had rung one night asking if they wanted the Letter of Recommendation to be written on his Parish letterhead. “I think it might be better not to” he’d advised with a chuckle, “As my parish is officially the Kenmore Psychiatric Hospital and the Goulburn Gaol.”

The taxi disgorged their entire luggage onto the pavement outside the North door of the Abbey. A long suit-bag hid the woollen wedding dress which she’d refused to pack in her suitcase knowing that if she did it would end up in South America. The Qantas stewards had hung it in their own wardrobe and made sure each change-over crew took care of it.

She tried to juggle her hand luggage, the dress and a suitcase.

“I can take that” her fiancé unprized her fingers.

“But you’ve only just come out of hospital, the surgeon said no lifting.”

“Honestly I’ll be fine and anyway the op was four days ago now.”

One of the Westminster guides took pity on them and helped them to the office where the precious document waited. It was bigger than they’d anticipated, over fifteen inches square. It allowed for the “Solemnization of a true, pure and lawful Marriage … between the hours of eight in the forenoon and six in the afternoon in the Church at Thornton-le-Dale, Pickering in the County of Yorks.” The large embossed “Seal of the Office of Faculties at Westminster” was attached.

Tucking the impressive document into their luggage the young couple headed outside to find a taxi to take them to Kings Cross station. Now that the legendary green steam engine 4472 was no longer on the Flying Scotsman route, the London to Edinburgh run had lost some of its intrigue and romance. But the modern diesel engine would get them to York in under four hours and the rhythmic “digedy dee, digedy daa.” was still the heartbeat of ‘hurrying home.’

The young couple hugged each other and breathed a huge sigh of relief as they relaxed into their seats, the emergency hospital trip in the last few days, the drama on the flight all behind them as they headed north to York, to her family, to their wedding and to their future together.

by Caroline Gaden  © 

I remember - I wish

I remember when the body was not so battered, when it was younger, smaller, more muscular and more supple. It was toned by bike rides to and from the stables before and after school; it was trimmed by riding horses every single day; it was tempered by vigorous grooming of those same horses and it was strengthened by cleaning stables and tossing straw.

It was more flexible, relaxing into the ground as it landed after yet another disagreement between horse and rider about velocity, height and direction.

It managed to hang onto the reins every time and so avoid the long, ignominious trudge home following the trail of galloping hoof prints.

It even had the nerve to return for repeated doses day after day, the success of a few steps of “passage” or sailing over the jumps with ease being sufficient opiate to continue the addiction.

I wish the body had been treated with more compassion by time. Now the body creaks as it stiffly eases out of bed; now the arthritic joints are extracting payment for their misspent youth.

Once the decline started, it happened very quickly. It was retiring from competition, so the body was only riding for pleasure, that caused it. The body slowed, the mind was not quite so sharp, the reactions dulled. The falls became more frequent, they took greater toll, they were no longer ‘bounces’ they were ‘splats’, the recoveries took longer, days not hours, months not weeks.

The Medical Fund asked if the body had been in a car accident, the injuries were so bad; the Police asked if the battered face was the result of domestic violence; the children didn’t know how to handle a Mum lying in hospital who looked like a boxer at the end of ten rounds

Once horses had been the reason for living, now they’d been the reason for almost dying.

Once the day started and ended with horses being fed and rugged; now it starts and ends with a cuppa and a stretch.

Once the saddles and bridles were soaped and polished every day; now they reside on their racks untouched.

Once the farrier was a regular visitor; now there’s been no visit in years.

Once the weekend competitions were trained for and planned months in advance; now weekends barely register

Once “Hoofs and Horns’ was the magazine seen scattered over the living room; now it’s “Country Patchwork”.

Once the horse float had transported the family all over the state; now it stores the kid’s excess furniture.

Once I was going to sell all the gear as this battered body no longer needs it; now it’ll go to my son who wants to start the cycle again with his younger, fitter, more muscular and more supple body. The family  addiction to horses continues.               

by Caroline Gaden  ©  

A life in the day of...... ( A writing exercise)

A life in the day of ….

Crash! Bang! Crack! I wake up with a start. I’m in the POW camp; no, no… I’ve been dreaming again. I’m awake now, thank goodness, that nightmare is probably best left behind.

What was the dreadful noise that woke me, scared me? What time is it? Why is the house in total darkness? Usually the corridor night-light is visible.

No use seeing if the old dog is awake, total deafness has some advantages.

The silence is palpable. No heavy breathing. No snoring. Now that’s unusual.  I swear my husband snores with an Australian accent; he swears I snore in Yorkshire dialect even though I moved Down Under nearly forty years ago.

I feel the other side of the bed. Empty. Where is he?

I can see the blinking red light of the torch next to the bed. Smart move that, to buy a torch that lets you know where it is… very useful when we go camping in the lonely outback.

I slide out of bed, switch on the torch and paddle silently down the corridor. At least the torchlight means I don’t tread on the old dog’s pigs-ear.

Spouse  is in the living room peering onto the deck.

“That was a whopper”. As he spoke the house is illuminated in brilliant white light and the boom of thunder rolls overhead again. No time to count the number of seconds between flash and crash, the storm is directly overhead. The heavens open to sheets of rain pouring onto the roof and ground. What wonderful life sustaining water onto this parched, drought-stricken land.

“We were very close to that one”.

“There’s no light on the oven clock but the microwave is flashing again, so it’s been off. Lucky I took out the aerial and power plugs for the TV before I went to bed.”

“What about the computer. I took out the plugs but left the modem line attached. Please don’t tell me I’m going to lose all that work?”

Check the phone.

Silence.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

“Let’s have a cuppa; I can’t go back to bed whilst this storm is still raging.”

“What’s the time?” The faithful old grandfather clock points to four in the morning. It has seen a lot of fours in the morning since Robert Skelton put a final polish to its brass face in the year Captain Cook arrived in Australia.

What was that song? “It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning, just woke up the wanting in me”. Now I’ll have that bloody tune floating round in my head all day.

“Here’s your cuppa.” We sit and watch the receding storm for a while. I’m still worried about all the files on the computer.

“But you have back-up don’t you?”

“Yes on a stick and on the external hard drive. But it’s the whole rigmarole of a new computer, new programs to install, settings to work out. It’s a pain in the proverbial.”

The sun makes a tepid appearance behind the easterly hills.

I go back to bed.

A couple of hours later the old dog appears. I hear her first, a scratch then a roll, a wriggle and a yawn, a stretch and a whine. She vocalises more frequently and more loudly now she is deaf. Then she appears near the bed and scratches at the blanket. I eventually admit I’m awake and let her outside. “It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning, just woke up the wanting in me”

It’s still raining as I open the door and check to see if we have any reptilian visitors on the verandah. I don’t mind the Blue Tongue, Jacky Dragon and Penny Lizards, it’s the slippery, slithering, venomous, legless reptiles that I hate.  Far too wet for such callers, so out goes the dog.  It’s a very quick widdle; she doesn’t care if the ‘roos have been in the garden, doesn’t care if the fox has visited the compost heap, doesn’t care if the Jacky Dragon is waiting to scoot off into the woodpile, today is a day to get outside and back inside in the shortest possible time. I haven’t even had time to put the kettle on when she’s at the door demanding to come indoors.

I dig out my Impressionist beaker. For some daft reason, now there’s a good Yorkshire word from my childhood, for some daft reason my morning cappuccino tastes better when I share my drink with  Renoir.

“It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning …..”

The coffee hits the spot and I head to the shower. The rain would have just about filled the water tanks and I don’t really need to stand in the bucket to collect the shower water. But old habits die hard. If I’m a water-miser now my new trees will be able to have an extra drink in the scorching heat of the harsh summer sun.

Breakfast, the usual menu:  boiled eggs, thank you Zoë and Chloe; home made bread, thank you Mr. Panasonic; home made marmalade thanks to the overburdened lemon tree that valiantly produces a mountain of fruit each year. And the inevitable cuppa, tea this time, in the poppy or sweet pea beaker. When I first started the book it had to be the poppy beaker. I’d left poppies at each battleground, each massacre site and each POW location that we’d visited earlier in the year; poppies were an ever constant reminder. But as the chapters have been written, the nightmares endured, the poppy has had to make way for the more calming sweet-peas.

What am I going to do today?

Better get on with the book; just have the last chapter to write but I need to proof read the early chapters. The training is okay, the fighting harder to read. Can I manage that bit about Muar and Parit Sulong again? I went to the tiny shed where those desperately wounded men were tortured before being massacred, I visualise it daily. No I can’t read it again. Yes I must. I must do it. But I know it’ll be hard to proof read through tears.

I hear the whistle. 

My friends have arrived for breakfast. “You’re late today” I chide them. The male king parrot glides gently from the railing onto my arm. His yellow and black eyes are beadlike on each side of his vermillion head, his collar a prussic blue, his back a rich patchwork of green. He expertly cracks open the sunflower seeds in his strong beak, drops the husk and swallows the kernel. The female arrives, no flashes of red on her head, just a camouflage of many-hued green. The two happily share the space and seeds. But then a second male arrives and the territorial one-up-man-ship begins. The female keeps feeding, letting the flamboyant males screech and flap at each other. After a short time I throw the remaining seeds onto the ground. That’s the signal the magpies are waiting for. They swoop across the paddock from their look-out tree, singing their delightful song of thanks as they arrive. The galahs, crested pigeons, crimson rosellas, grass parrots and Eastern rosellas then all come for their turn to enjoy the wheat and sunflower seeds.

I head back inside. “It’s four in the morning, and once more the dawning…”

The massacres await my attention.

The letters from Malaya are fun to read; the author, my father-in-law had a fine eye for detail and I’ve enjoyed transcribing them. But there’s been so much extra research to do. Who were the people he mentioned? Could I find out more about them? Did they survive? Did they die in the fighting? Did they suffer brutalities as a POW?

My research has taken me over the State, inter-state and over the sea to Malaya, Singapore and Thailand. It has been a journey of discovery, incredible sorrow and mateship. Now I have to put it all together into words.

Chapter Three, the trip on the troop ship Queen Mary. I start to proofread. My reference describes the manoeuvre the Queen Mary took to farewell the other ships in the convoy and says she could travel at 40 knots. Could her escort to Singapore, HMS Durban, keep up? I ring ex-RAN relative to ask. No she couldn’t he advises. She was an old ship, scrapped in 1944, she would have managed 35 knots in her heyday. He thinks the speeding away from the rest of the convoy [which was heading for Europe] was just for show. I read him my reference. I have tears before I reach the end, I know the fate of so many of these brave young men and women.

The greatest ships in almost telepathic communication, laden with the world’s finest fighting men, each heart going out to the other in a gesture of well wishing – a rare glimpse of mass emotion in a moment of admiration and bewilderment. It may never happen again. The blood surged through my veins and within myself I said “I am proud to be a part of this.”

The convoy divided, the Queen Mary speeding at an increased rate behind the destroyer H.M.S. Durban. The others faded until they were mere silhouettes on a tropical horizon, following an ocean greyhound. And we were alone; pounding along to Singapore.

Such pride; such optimism; such faith; such comradeship; how poignant that the outcome was to be so horrendous.

I finish proof reading the chapter. It’s so hard, harder than I expected because I know worse is to come in my journey through this war in Asia.

I need lunch. I can’t keep up this pace of concentration. Chai tea, slice of homemade bread, an avocado and a banana give me some respite. The rain is still threatening from up in the dark grey clouds, battleship grey, like the old Commonwealth Bank interior in The Mall. At least the real battleships have a myriad of colourful cables snaking along the corridors, far more interesting than the boring, bland, grey sameness of the bank interior. “It’s four in the morning, and once more…”

It’s time for a walk. The old dog doesn’t want to come these days, she hides if the lead appears.

I find my hat, put on walking shoes and grab the iPod. What a great little machine. I’ve finally worked out how to copy my CD’s onto it. Now I can march for an hour or so to the exhilarating colliery brass bands of my youth in Yorkshire.

Which way shall I go today? Hmmm, weather could be dodgy so I’ll do a cloverleaf and be reasonably close to home should the clouds shed their load. First to the dead-end of our road, all gravel, no tar here, too few people to warrant the cost. There’s the odd wattle tree, blown down in the strong wind of the storm. Next it’s back to the junction, past the house with the Rottweiler. Glad their gate is shut. Weather looks okay so I’ll head up to the next intersection, past the gate of our security conscious neighbour. He has two padlocks on his gate plus a thick steel square lock which has additional locks on. What? Today Mr. Security’s gate is open. He must be down at his caravan. His sheep look as if they are heading out, ‘grass is greener’ and all that. I shoo them back in.

As I puff  back up our steep driveway I check out the cattle in the house paddock, all okay. In the house I haven’t even got my breath when the phone rings. “Caroline, do you have a gun up there?” Neighbour Rosalie sounds very agitated. I wonder what Stuart has done to warrant such wrath. “Er no, why do you need a gun?”

“There’s a brown snake that’s caught up in the wire round one of my roses near the backdoor. I called WIRES three hours ago and they still haven’t come to remove it. I want to shoot the damned thing so I can go to work.”

I commiserate but then hang up, chuckling. Only Rosalie would demand a gun to shoot a snake. “It’s four in the morning, and…”

The oven lights are still not working so the electrician has been called. Even as I think of him I see Wayne driving up to the house. He soon has the offending appliance out of its hole in the wall. He deftly undoes screws and pulls out bits and pieces, uses a little black box to look for power and then pronounces “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m going to have to phone Miele and see if we can get a new computer for it.”

Great! No oven. I have a party of over forty coming for dinner on Saturday night and I have no oven. Perhaps the rain will stay away long enough for us to light a bonfire and use the camp ovens. We are celebrating Guy Fawkes Night after all.

Dinner tonight… haven’t even thought of it so far! I know the microwave is okay but what about the hotplates? I turn one on. It seems to be taking for ever to heat up and turn red. Or is it that I’m just anxious and don’t really know how long it normally takes to glow.

Yes, it’s okay. Relief.

I’d forgotten the washing machine. I switch it on. No blinking lights. Damn. It looks as if that’s also going to be added to the insurance claim…. What else is there?

“It’s four in the morning….”

The deep-freezes. I haven’t checked them! Are they still working or am I going to have a melting disaster on my hands… again. It’s happened before, when we lived near Goulburn. We’d just filled the freezer with a side of beef and lightening burnt the motor. I ended up putting an SOS call out over Radio 2GN and had offers of freezer space from  many sympathetic folk. It was so very heartening but I wonder if such offers would be forthcoming these days?

Okay raid the freezer. Phew! It’s fine, no sign of ‘global warming’ inside. Pull out some steak for dinner, along with frozen roast pumpkin and broccoli from our vegetable patch. Soon have some fresh vegs added and we’ll have a stir fry. I’ll open a bottle of wine, a red from a local winemaker. It’s good quaffable stuff with no chemicals thrown in, so no asthma attacks, no hospital visits.

There’s nothing worth watching on TV tonight. Where’s my book? Australian Adrian d’Hage is the author. Last week I heard him interviewed on the Conversation Hour and knew I just had to read his book “The Beijing Conspiracy”, a terrorism story set at the next Olympics. I’m enjoying it, but it’s very scary. No doubt I’ll have more nightmares tonight, but this time set in 2008 rather than 1943.

“It’s four in the morning……”.

A writing exercise put together in late October 2007 ©