The very first memory

 The very first memory… my parents were involved in building an additional room on the house, I must have been 4 or 5 or 6 (or less), and it had rained so much that the foundations had flooded. We had an emergency operation, and I was helping to scoop water out of the ditch. If I could see a video of that moment I would, of course, be shocked, because it would not resemble in the slightest my memory… but that is the first one that I have and it is pleasant… there is happiness and peacefulness overpowering the concern for the flooding. That little Greater Manchester home… Cambourne Drive… was a little capsule of happiness. I recall the build-up to Christmas, school holidays, putting up the Christmas Tree, snow falling and already deep outside, Smokey and the Bandits on TV. I was delightfully happy. Later in life I asked my mother what her happiest memories were and she said ‘Cambourne Drive days.’

                  When my parents announced that we were moving to South Africa, I was devastated, but a short while afterwards, I was walking home from school with my mother in the thick snow and I suddenly thought, and said, ‘I can’t wait to get away from this snow and see the sunshine in South Africa.' Upon arrival in South Africa, the dry heat and dead grass struck me as a violent attack on the senses. I was in despair. However, the first few days were spent in a hotel with a swimming pool and I thought we had suddenly found the glamour life. Coca Cola and swimming in the sun with toasted sandwiches. I don’t think I’d had too many cokes in England nor toasted sandwiches. Of course, I burned and shed my skin… spent days bedridden with sun stroke, a classic English lad landing in a foreign sunny land for the first time. 

                  In my early twenties I started to work in IT for a travel company and the travel bug bit. Since then, my life has been one of constant travel, still with IT thrown in and literature, too. I have lived in various parts of England, I have lived in Spain, I have lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now I live in Dallas Texas. I miss the rain. I miss the slow soft snow. I miss my mother who passed away just before Christmas 2023. My father still lives in South Africa. My brother lives in the UK, not far from where we were born.

Everything is spread out and everyone disappears. 



Orca's pub, Southport, Kwazulu Natal, South Africa

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