GEORGE WAS A VERY POSITIVE INFLUENCE.
The cat Shadow stretched languidly in my Leader's chair, secure in the knowledge that its customary occupant was visiting our solitary (and often unfairly maligned) hospital for an x-ray to make sure the persistent cough with which she has been plagued for several weeks holds no dire significance.
"Were you ever ambitious?" he asked.
"Yeah, I suppose so," I said, "but not for power. I never wanted to rule anybody and I have always opposed anybody who wants to rule me."
"What were your ambitions then?"
"Oh heck, there were loads of them - mostly daydreams - and they changed over the years."
"Go on," he coaxed.
"Well, when I was a kid I wanted to be a newspaper columnist like Cassandra of the Daily Mirror. That was after I got over wanting to be Johnny Mack Brown, the cowboy hero of Flaming Frontiers, or Wilson from The Truth About Wilson in the Wizard comic."
"What happened?"
"Oh, a wise uncle, bit of a negative influence, asked me if I could parse, or do shorthand, or even knew the parts of speech. I was twelve or thirteen and in a wartime elementary school. We were being groomed to be shop assistants, or to unplug sinks on sink estates or something equally useful. We knew there were nouns, verbs and adjectives and how to write 'Dear Sir' and 'Your obedient servant' on a job application form should we ever get to complete one. The wise uncle knew the score even before he asked the questions. He told me to forget a literary career."
"So you went into the army."
"From the age of fourteen until I was twenty six, yes."
"Any ambitions at that time?"
"To see my time out and to complete the correspondence course I'd started when I was about twenty four."
"You've not mentioned that before."
"No, well...it was never going to get me a qualification or a job, but it included a brush-up-your- English introduction from which I learned for the first time about those eight confounded parts of speech. It also acquainted me with the writer George Woodman who was my course tutor and a very positive influence. For a time George was the only Independent member of Whitstable Council. He had a lot of friends and I was fortunate enough to be included among them. We only ever met once, but our friendship by correspondence and the occasional phone call lasted right up until his death."
"Good writer?"
"Oh yes, his novel Taken At The Flood was published by Macmillan in 1957. Darned good yarn. I think it's out of print now, but I saw somewhere that We Remember Whitstable, written by George and his wife Greta and published by Pryor Publications, can still be obtained on the internet.
"So you just wanted to become a writer," he mused and with a glint of mischief in his eyes repeated: "What happened?"
I gave him a decidedly old-fashioned look. "I became a writer."
"I won't argue with that, mate," he said gently, "I don't know what I'd say without you."
AUTUMN LOOMS.
Suddenly it is September, two thirds of the way through the year and autumn looms. (Americans call it the fall, one of the few agreeable modifications they have made to our language.)
I dread it.
We have no trees in our tiny front garden or in the courtyard at the back, but the church along the way has loads of them and the school opposite is not short of them; a couple of gardens further down from our courtyard have them, too.
We find ourselves to be the solitary dead leaf depository for the entire neighbourhood.
So each year I get out and sweep and shovel and swear and, for the umpteenth time, point out to uninterested listeners that we have no trees.
"I do not care," I snarl, glaring in the direction of the church,"whether or not they are holy leaves; they are a ...king nuisance and if my drains get blocked I'll sue somebody."
Most of the time my drains do not get blocked and I don't think a lawyer would advise litigation, not even if they did and I knew who was responsible. However, by the time the last leaf has fallen I am quite prepared to repay what my solicitor would call "An act of God" by suing God.
Meantime, we drive out into the country - a stone's throw away - and admire the russets and browns and yellows and reds of the shrubs and trees in all their breath-taking autumnal majesty. We remark upon their beauty and give thanks for it. We say yet again that we must one day visit New England in the fall and know that we probably never will. And we return home gratefully aware there are billions of fallen leaves that did not come to rest in our garden. But don't tell me that when I'm sweeping the buggers up.
LUCIANO PAVAROTTI.
There will be so much written and said about this great tenor. I never had the good fortune to see him on stage but, thanks to television and film, everybody with any interest in singing knew the big man with the big voice, the big smile and the white handkerchief.
His death at 71 was sad but not unexpected.
His legacy will surely last forever
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