More about myself

Some people (actually just me) have been complaining that this site is not very revealing of the author - that somehow I use wordplay and poetic artifice to obscure from sight anything of the "real me". Ok, fair enough. So here's some more autobiographical detail:

I was born in London at a very young age, and am eternally indebted to a small pair of scissors (that I imagine have now sucumbed to the ravages of rust and time). The scissors, which I affectionately refer to as 'hands', were clasped together in prayer at some godforsaken hour on July 13th 1932. This act of worship brought about the parting of a string from a wrist , a thin multicoloured thread tied by a sister on a brother, only to be rudely parted by same sister, in an act of misunderstood playfulness. Brother, far too senstive for his own well being, asked to be reimbursed the five english shillings he'd handed over along with a fragile oath of lifelong protection (the tying of the string in exchange for money and an oath of protection being a long standing annual custom celebrating the bond of brothers and sisters), and then fled the family fold to join a company of sheep.

The sheep mooed and bleated; in this land of cows and bovine privillege the poor things were suffering a self imposed identity crisis, as were the other animals imported from New Zealand by Mr. Sharma, proprieter of the all new antipodean zoo. Brother became resident zookeeper, and fascinated by the furry things, took to close relations, knitting himself a comfort blanket on those lonely, frustrating adolescent nights. One in particular stood out. 'Bo peep' he named her, but only in retrospect.

Brother's abandoned family pleaded. Bo peep bleated. Brother's stubborn streak greeted. The one with contempt, the other with a cuddle and a warm sweet nothing. Time came to pass, as it invariably does, with such blasted inconvenience, rearing its finite head above the parapet and mocking Brother with its swift passage. The sheep died. So did Mr Sharma, and with him the zoo. What to do? Brother returned home, to find himself permanently ostracized.

''We sent you to the best schools, and this is how you have repaid us?''.

''The sacrifices we made, and you end up living with sheep, hai, hai, it breaks my heart even to say it''.

''If I could reach you I would slap you''.

Did I forget to say? Brother suffered from an overactive thyroid; he was a giant of what he had now become. A MAN. And so they bleated their scalding scoldings; except that, well except that the only one scalded was Sister, who still held herself responsible. Brother left, forever now estranged, and as he left through the departing door, eyed that culpable pair of scissors, that so long ago...
A tailor Brother became. Why not? If his life had taken so drastic a turn with a snip snip on thread, why change the lifetime of a habit?

One day, brother sat at his sewing machine. His heart thumped louder than the turning spindle. Could it be? The wool from which he cut bore the unmistakable smell, the signature touch and feel of his long departed Bo Peep. Oh, what cruel irony. Enough to dispel all faith in irony of a happier kind. Brother cried while smothering his face in BoPeep's woven pelt. Ahh, but then the viccisitudes of life, for at that very moment, when tears of remorse were flooding the plains of Brother's grieving face, a maiden entered to deliver a commission for her mother. If there was one maiden susceptible to a tender giant then it was she, her sensibility corrupted by the romantic lie that a sensitive soul encased by a brutish demenour, is somehow more virtuous in its sensitivity than the sensitive soul of a eight stone weakling. Pah! Yes she, the maiden who had overdosed on German romanticism, walked in at the very same moment that Brother was bent remorsefully over BoPeep's pelt. Oh what a sight she moaned. So magnificent a man mountain. Hung, she was sure, like a horse. But such tactile sensitivity that it could bring tears to his eyes! They were married on Febuary 14th 1934. I am their grandson. The rest of the blogs on this site will, I hope, now make some kind of sense.