This book is a snappy series of mostly one or two page anecdotes from life. They are short stories about real situations. I have not organised them chronologically because I quite liked the way they jumped around. Together they form a mosaic picture of a life well lived. The are little sketches of moments in time. As with the pointillists you have to stand back to savour the whole effect.
The sketches are light and easy to read so that the book has good pace. I have put the science/evolution section towards the end. It is a short section but I find it fascinating.
I have put a series of pieces about my writing through the decades at the very end. I thought this might be of interest to some people.
Enjoy!
Contents
Introduction
Ghost story
Heroin
The cat and the motor-biker
Toads
Joey my crow
Slith the snake
Bede and the Party
Hat and the E-Type Jag
Poetry – Allen Ginsberg and seeing the light
The Spider
Beat Poetry and Beatniks
Lipher my pet rat
My days of writing
The Colonel and the National Front
Ten of my best hates
These are ten things I love
Listening to my old Grandma
Dark Matter becomes weirder than Sci-fi as Opher names the DM atoms and sub-atomic particles
Native American Indians – A story of genocide and betrayal
Long hair and the Sixties
A Native American Indian girl on a Greyhound bus across the States
Creation
The day of endless sky
Close to death – the motorbike and luck
The Queen Mother and I
My digs in Ilford
My girlfriend rolling up hill
Two lesbians, a baby and our breakfast
Our three weddings
Wedding Number One
Wedding Number Two
Wedding Number Three – the Pagan Maypole Fiasco
A Bedford van around Europe
A murderer in the Deli
Another murderer in the same Deli
Disabilities
My minivan, no brakes and a diving copper outside Parliament
My minivan outside the Corn Exchange in the City of London
The offer of infinity
Vinyl albums – Works of Art
The Animal House and Rabbits
Frogs, Snakes, Salamanders and the Deep Freeze
Naming the Guinea Pigs
Vivisection of cats
Farewell to my research
Roy Harper and the burning car
Hijabs, burqas, religion, misogyny and modesty
Reaching the sky
They make ‘em tough in Hull
Kids and red powder paint
A favourite teacher
Another favourite teacher
Blowing the school off the map
Education – a tale of parents and me
My Grandfather a Psychic Medium
Memories of my Grandfather – a Spiritualist Healer
The colorful life of my Nanny
Fifteen and hitching around France with Foss – the planning and execution
Hitch-hiking the reality of France
Hitch-hiking in France without the Hitch-hiking.
Hans and the Rolling Stones
My first Rock Gig – The British Birds with Ron Wood at the Walton Hop
Being oneself – who are we?
Learning to drive in a brightly colored Ford Popular
My second gig – Them with Van Morrison
A teacher exchange to Los Angeles
Having a gun pulled on you in a classroom
Gangs in a classroom
American generosity
Mr. Rose and the Psychedelic Garden
Stoned and out
Round St Helens as it exploded in a Cessna
A Headteacher and Cannabis
New York in 1971 at the end of the Hippie dream
On the Street in Sixties Boston
Life on a Greyhound to San Francisco
My first Roy Harper gig
Big Sur, Henry Miller, Mountain lions and a bust on the beach
On the Greyhound back through Mexico, and Texas to New York
The McDevits and the Glasgow Mafia
John, books and dope.
Worse is often better
A tale to chill the heart
The Night of the big bust-up
More Bust-up
Mexico City in a VW
My Mum won the Second World War with Winston Churchill.
My Dad drove the Nazis out of Italy
My Eighteenth Birthday
Hitching across the Pennines to a Roy Harper gig
The Phone Tap
My Writing and the Zeitgeist
The trauma of a first birth
Early years in teaching and William Burroughs and censorship
A boring old fart still Rockin’
Rockin’ the Curriculum
The worst job I ever had – working in the factory
On my arse in the sewage – one of the best jobs I had
My first Captain Beefheart concert in 1968
My first meeting with Roy Harper
Acid Casualties – Jeff Evans – A friend
The crash
The story of life
The Story of Religion
Evolution and Natural Selection
Evolution through Natural Selection
The Creation of life
The evolution of Humans
Evolution within Humans
Humans and why we’re not evolving
Human evolution and skin colour
Human evolution – It was the cows wot done it!
Writing – How and When
Writing – How I started writing and my first project ‘Reality Dreams’
Writing – how my writing continued
Writing – The early days – writing through the seventies
Writing – The Big Breakthrough
Writing – The Roy Harper biography
Writing – writing in the 90s and into the 00s
Writing – The publishing fiasco
Writing now – writing into the future as the horse slowly walks off round the bend into the sunset
A success.
We’ll see.
There is no doubt, cover just says it all.
It will do what it does. At the moment it is sitting there!