Have Pen, Will Travel...

HAVE PEN, WILL TRAVEL...

I was aimlessly trawling though my archives recently – these short autobiographical sketches are based on what I found there:

Go West!
Mutual histories, myths and legends are what keep families together. Unfortunately in my family these are few and far between. As far as I know one of my grandparents was mad or French or both, another, the only one I ever knew, was either Irish or Cornish. He owned a ukelele. I know even less about the others. There is a hint of Italian somewhere but I think that had something to do with my father's first wife. Yes both my parent had been married before as a result I had a half brother and a half sister. Judging by my date of birth I was probably a direct result of the World War II ending and the victory celebrations that followed. I was born and grew up in London. After my father died, relatively young, for some reason the two halves of the family didn't mix. I lost, until recently, all contact with my brother and his family. The other half of the family moved out west to seek their fortunes. Well, not very far west at first, just about 100km, to Swindon. There they settled and multiplied before moving on. Some of them are now so far west they can't  go much further. Just this year my sister's oldest son was the last to leave Swindon and head for the West Country. So that just leaves a nephew in New Zealand.
Oh - and me..... I went East!

Have Pen (1)

I think I have been drawing all my life, as far back as I can remember, probably from the moment I could hold a crayon.
Right through school and all through my first job. I was  a trainee civil engineer, I never progressed much further than holding the wrong end of a tape measure but my technical drawings were quite impressive if not always as accurate as they should have been. Bored and unchallenged, by ' mutual consent', I left. After a series of odd jobs, and even odder job applications, I applied to a teachers training college in Canterbury, I chose art as my main subject, to be honest, not because I thought I could draw well but simply because I thought it was the easiest option. I learned a lot at this college, mainly that I didn't really want to be a teacher! However I also discovered that I had a wide range of creative talents. With no real background I was, it seemed, quite good at a lot of things, including painting, drawing, pottery and textile design, writing poetry and drama. The downside being that I was not exceptionally good at any one of them. Forced to specialise I surprisingly chose textile design because of the wide variety of techniques available and there was no graphics department.
On leaving college I led pretty much the traditional/cliché artist life: penniless and living in an attic. I moved back to London and then on to The Netherlands. A new town, Breda, and several new attics. I had several exhibitions, in cafés, cultural centres and minor galleries, some more successful than others. I went through various phases and artistic styles but increasingly visual 'jokes' were creeping into my work. Almost without realising it I evolved into a cartoonist. At first illustrating educational material, then books, pamphlets and public service campaigns. Yes, I even earned some money!  Well - enough to provide myself with regular meals!
My main body of work over the years has included annual illustrations for a writer and publisher of books on management, weekly and monthly spots on trade magazines and work for various departments of Breda City Council, a local pressure group representing the interests of the handicapped and chronically sick, Phillips and Mikrocentrum a high-tech institute in Eindhoven.
Apart from illustrating other peoples books, magazines and articles a book I both wrote and illustrated was printed and published in Kyrgyzstan, now that doesn't happen to everybody!!!   

Have Pen (2)

If I could draw as soon as I could hold a crayon, I started writing as soon as I could join letters together or maybe even before. I have no idea what I found to write about at that age! My memoires or the meaning of life maybe? Probably not, I think there were a lot of cops, robbers, cowboys, indians and pirates involved. Through junior and secondary school I enjoyed writing essays. Essays were the only pieces of homework that I ever managed finished on time. In those days at school and later in college exams were not mulitiple choice, we mostly had written exams and, here's something I wouldn't have admitted to my fellow students at the time, I liked them. I was never very good at names and dates but given a pen,unlimited paper and two or three uninterrupted hours to write I could generally write enough around and about most subjects to convince the examiners and, unlike homework,  I enjoyed doing it.

By the time I went to college, which was several years after leaving school, I had started writing poetry. Some friends who were studying English persuaded me, with some difficulty, to show my poems to the head of the English department. He was so impressed that the same friends, all aspiring poets, regretted having sent me to him! My work was published in many British fringe poetry magazines and, when I moved to the continent, also in Dutch and Belgian publications. Hard to believe now but I even gave some poetry readings and, I have suddenly remembered, I had a book of poems published by a small independent Dutch publisher! I wonder if anybody still has a copy? I don't.

I also wrote some songs for a rock band, I needn't have bothered, no one could hear the words, a few sha-la-la's or doo-wa-diddies would have done just as well! 

At some point painting and then cartooning took over, pushing any writing into a distant second place. What I did write was limited to translation work on a wide variety of subjects, from sociology to sperm donation, and occasional short English texts for websites or presentations. It was only about seven years ago that I seriously started writing again having decided to begin a monthly column for a handful of students in Kyrgyzstan.I always found it difficult to write or concentrate on anything much longer than a poem or a short story and even more difficult to decide if I wanted to be serious or funny. Writing these columns, which now have a much wider audience, enables me to be both – often at the same time.

Will Travel

I like to think of myself as something of a traveller but the truth is although I may travel more than most people I have travelled a whole lot less than many others. Anyway if a desire to travel is genetically determined my chances were no better than 50- 50.
My father was a hard working man but when there were things to do around the house that he couldn't, or wouldn't be bothered with, he would say “I'll do it when I come back from my holidays”... he never , ever, went on holidays. 
My mother was quite the opposite, if fact she went out one day and kept going all the way to the West Indies leaving me at home alone with my father while my sister was sent to live with strangers.  
When my mother returned a year or so later my parents must have come to some sort of agreement, after that they lived, not exactly together, but under the same roof. Why? I can only speculate but whatever the reason this agreement didn't involve family holidays and certainly not trips to foreign countries!

I did run away from home once when I was about seven years old. The escape was well planned and cleverly executed however I had not thought things through. Once out I had nowhere to go!

I was soon recaptured.

Going Back

My trips back to England are not particularly frequent and a whole lot of things have changed since I left Britain more than 30 years ago...and so have I. What's more - they go on changing with the result that each time I return I feel like I am in some sort of parallel universe. Many things seem at first sight familiar but then again nearly everything is in some way different. The names of the shops on the high streets have changed. In restaurants I am not sure what to order. Worse, in pubs I often don't even know which beer to ask for! I am constantly, unrealistically, amazed by the prices. Not because things are so much more expensive but because I have an outdated concept of the pound and due to the infrequency of my visits prices always seem to have increased by huge amounts while, in fact, they have been creeping up incrementally, day by day, like everywhere else!  

Not obviously a foreigner but hesitant with my choices, puzzled by the prices and fumbling with coins I am no longer familiar with, I'm sure shop or bar staff think that I am mentally deficient in some way and who can blame them. In a totally foreign country difficulty with the currency, prices and terminology is all part of the fun but being a stranger in my country of origin is at best a surreal experience at worst it makes me feel really stupid!

 

 

Everything does eventually start falling into place but by then it's time for me leave!