(I am going to have to call a halt to this section of the blog - most of it is too full of very personal and family reminiscence. I thought that there was enough to share without straying into material I should wait a generation to publish - so perhaps 2050? I am not cut out to be a confidential autobiographer. This is not written to whet any appetites - I actually feel disappointed but potentially far too exposed. Sorry - if there is more good stuff that avoids this impasse, I'll put it on. So this will be the last posting for the moment).
England is the music I heard lucky that I was growing up with classical music at home with my father listening to the gods of the world he grew up in in Central Europe the pupils of pupils of Liszt the members of the Suk dynasty of violinists the concerts in London South Bank Sunday afternoon recitals Proms at the Albert Hall Opera at Sadlers Wells and sometimes even Covent Garden usually too expensive and posh for me but where I was taken at the age of seven to hear the Magic Flute never to be forgotten and finally Ronnie Scotts the best jazz club in England where American greats came to as one of few places in Europe they toured and all this left me spoiled for anything but the best played by the best
England is going to be coached in the mysteries of cricket at the field of my kind great uncle who'd hide half crowns for me in the hall every Christmas and practicing in the nets and bowling to an older man who'd played for England who clearly had finally run out of patience and let fly with a straight drive that might have sealed my fate and his but the ball parted my hair as it sailed into orbit an inch or two lower and I would have been a short story a mourned statistic rapidly fading as the ink dried and not the mediocre novel in three volumes I became
England is going to play on the Sunday building site of the new estate on the edge of the northern town the planners had bold hopes for thirty years before all was politics unemployment and desolation and throwing a brick in the air which came down so unerringly onto my head to cause an exciting flow of blood and a contusion and a concussion words from a world of doctors you didn't hear every day and a shake of the fatherly head at a son who'd throw a brick straight up in the air and watch it come down without apparently knocking any sense into the little bugger
England is the peasouper of a fog my dad walked through home from the city 17 miles did he really do that and also the day the whole of London was covered with a thin layer of ice and buses slid across crossings and it was hard to stand and only slowly did we recognize that normal life had to be suspended
England was the Coronation televised and we watched a whole room full of people looking at a twelve inch screen flickering with a young queen weighed down by crown and centuries of rite just as Everest was climbed it seemed it had to be our expedition somehow we had missed out on the Poles although we had authentic heroes safely martyred but conquering Everest good English name seemed right and proper for the next Elizabethan age
England is after I hit my best friend on the nose I took my orange squash and climbed the oak tree holding my copy of the Beano and hung upside down all afternoon happy in the warm sun but wishing I hadn't hit my friend hard enough to break his nose and hoping it wasn't so hard we couldn't be friends again tomorrow
