Three Very DIfferent Times.

A photo of me, 23 years old, in our basement flat in Totterdown, Bristol.

 I sometimes think I have had so many different lives and can they all be the same me. Of course they are and they are the different bits that have made me what I am today.
I got married far too young. The trouble was, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to be. With my young French wife, we had already been through the whole acid thing and in fact were still in it. But, we were having to get used to being just the two of us whereas before we had lived in a shared flat where there were always loads of people dropping in. But we had moved to Bristol where we knew people but not people in that area which, to be frank, was mainly Pakistani.
We were both working in jobs we didn't like and yet still struggled to make ends meet. What moved us on was our landlord getting stabbed on our doorstep. He was a police informer so that probably explained it and we are off out of there and moved into a much classier flat in a much classier area, Clifton. And, sharing there with our good friend Nigel.

Sitting on the harbour wall in West Bay, Dorset.

In 2010 I gave in my notice. I was Centre Manager at the Bristol Language Centre, a good job, interesting and reasonably well paid. But I was increasingly finding it difficult to move around, climb stairs and so on. This was a result of diabetic neuropathy for which I was put on medication that left me feeling like a zombie: my secretary started asking if I was all right, telling me that I had been staring at the wall for twenty minutes. I discovered I could get Pension Credit as I was over sixty and felt I could live on that, particularly as I got a small golden handshake when I left.
I decided that my mum, who was pretty immobile and living alone since dad died, could probably do with me living a lot closer, so I moved to the small seaside town where she lived, finding myself a decent cheap flat quite near to the sea.
Having had a live-in partner since the age of 21 except for a small gap when my wife and I split up,  and then a series of student lodgers, I found myself not only alone but in a town where I knew nobody. I had to recreate a life, find myself things to do, discover if I could really live alone. And I discovered that I could and that I liked it. I got into some new music and I started exploring the area, but by car, as I couldn't walk very far without resting. And, I got back into reading and even started doing some writing. And, I started getting to know my mum and she started getting to know me. That was such a good thing and continued even more so when I moved in with her to get her out of hospital.

My childhood was quite a happy one, even though, when I look back on it now, it was in a quite special world, being the son of a London City Missionary. All our friends were in the church and those not in the church were going to Hell, that's what I learnt from my father's sermons.
We were very poor but very respectable and respected in our community in Croydon, a southern suburb of London.

My sister and I, in the front room around the piano.

One thing I remember from those days was the front room or parlour. This was the 'best' room and was kept for receiving important visitors. But we were allowed to use it for piano practice as both my sster and I had music lessons, mainly piano, from an early age. Half and hour every day, except Sundays, we were expected to practice. and to show improvement to our teacher, a severe looking lady, from the church of course. Now, I am pleased to have had this possibility but back then, it was a bit of a chore, one of many expected of us, and as the pastor's children, we had to be good at everything we attempted. I finally escaped music lessons when I strted on my GCE courses and complaned that I couldn't waste time any longer and had to be free to work on the subjects i considered important