Unreliable Memoirs
Sometimes, and that means much of my time these days, a writer writes simply to get the words out of his heart and soul and onto the page lest they die when he does. I suppose a lot of this is to do with ego; we feel that what we carry around in our mental rucksack is worthy of sharing with the world, and we’ll not know if that was the case until someone reads it all and passes judgment.
For years, over long hours of eating, drinking and smoking, I’ve been regaling anyone who’ll listen with stories about childhood and the formative years until marriage in 1966. The first volume I completed, Crazy Horse and The Coalman, has gone out to a limited circle of family and friends and, in general, was well received. It told the story from birth to my teens, with a narrative which ran simultaneously with the true story of my all-time hero, Tsunke Witco, a.k.a. the great Lakota Sioux Chief Crazy Horse. It was a fun book to write, because I managed to recall much about childhood, all the innocent joy, those open-ended days when the world truly is ours and none of the grisly challenges of living have yet come into play. Yet now I’ve completed volume 2, which takes me from 1959 to 1966, and although I imagined it would be easy remembering everything that happened between the ages 15 to 23, I was totally wrong. Perhaps when we leave childhood our perception widens. There’s much more to take in and memorise. Starting work means having to get things right, having to worry, look at the clock, take on responsibilities. All these restrictions, which one never had at school, create a dense fog over everything, and out memory is blurred. I have a rough chronology of important events, but they fade in and out like a radio signal fighting against static.
So All Aboard The Calaboose seems roughly the way things were, now that I’ve finally finished it, but many of the characters, minor events and locations seem fuzzy. All I could do is subtitle it ‘A Shaky Memoir’. I would have loved to call it ‘Unreliable’, but the great Clive James beat me to that several decades ago. After all, the story does begin in 1958 and when we get past 70 perhaps a little confusion is allowed. They do say that our geriatric brain cells are dying at a rate of knots, and that’s not a suggestion I shall argue with. So, with this book, all 400+ pages of it, the first edition is for family and friends and, anyone who knows me, reading this blog, who fancies trying their luck, can e-mail me and express an interest at roybainton@hotmail.com . This is a story of a young life which seemed to be going wrong from the start. Yet from my current vantage point, gazing back down the decades, I realise that without those adventures sailing around the world, and the failed forays into rock’n’roll, then the life I’ve enjoyed (and fortunately, still do) may well have been much more mundane. All Aboard The Calabooseis certainly not for the prudish or the faint-hearted. But if you want to sidestep the callous present and take a stride back into a vanished world of hope and youthful adventure, and you like to laugh, you’ll enjoy it. I think. I hope. As for publishers, I can’t imagine anyone worth submitting this to who would give it a deal. But what the hell. I’ve written it, and that’s all that matters. It’s out of my head and onto the page.
