What it means to be a boy

Cover picture by Hengki Koentjoro

I was given a new book - a birthday present from MYD - and couldn't put it down. A beautifully written though somewhat strange story a bit like although less substantial than Kafka on the Shore. The author pulls images from all manner of and random sources and mixes them all together into the mind of a seven year old boy, recounted when he is middle aged and his memory has become sketchy. And then, last evening we watched the new Netflix Mowgli. One cannot help comparing it with Favreau's Jungle Book or to Kipling's original stories but we enjoyed it none the less. The common theme is what it means to be a boy. I too have largely forgotten that richest part of my life story but small episodes come to my remembrance every so often - like watching the world go by perched on a dangerously rusty corrugated iron roof in blatant defiance of the Adults, or tinkering with ancient radio sets in my workshop in the Top Garden and the joy of finding that my recently constructed oscilloscope actually worked, or loitering in Drove Lane praying fervently that one or other of my boyhood would-be sweethearts would actually like me too. Nothing like as exciting as Mowgli.

I like this picture

Sci-Fi stories about time travel are often unsatisfactory and yet the concept is curiously attractive. But we can sort of time travel back by looking at photographs.

I like this picture - it brings back memories of posing for it whilst feeling the warmth of the dog beside me and the roughness of the bricks under my legs, and anyway it is a great photo - does that make me a narcissist?

Sadly the colours have faded - I was in fact wearing a light blue jumper and the sky behind was largely blue. I've tried adjusting the colours but cannot get it quite right.

The location was our "top garden", the one with the swimming pool (to the right) and my workshop (on the left).

I use this picture as my avatar for various computer apps so I get to see it daily. And sometimes as I look at it and dwell on times past I remember that my father, behind the camera, was also looking and it makes me wonder - and this makes my heart lurch - how much did I disappoint him in later life? Doubtless he appreciated my company in the railway room, the things I used to invent, my success at Oxford and getting a job for the BBC, my falling in love and marrying Ali. But then more and more of my time and devotion was spent on church things and with my own family and, when my mother died, he began to spend more time at the W's and for both these reasons we got to be with each other less and less.

If I could live my life over again many things I would not change - but I like to think this I would change - to spend more time and talk more with both my parents. To be an encouragement to them particularly in their later years.