Who Was Gertie Ford?

Here's a novel I wrote a few years ago:

Yes - - - Who Was Gertie Ford? Still on Amazon I noticed.

In 1966, just two weeks after the IRA blew up Nelson's Pillar in O'Connell Street Dublin, Eddie McGrath is knocked down and killed by the airport bus near the spot where the Pillar used to stand.
His death turns his seventeen year old daughter, Nuala, into an orphan.
She never knew her mother, Gertie, at all, and when she looked into her father's things she found items of her mother that deeply disturbed her.
The tale of Gertie Ford will take the reader to the west coast of Ireland, in search of Gertie, to a world of adventure, heartbreak and tragedy set in the mid forties and 1966 in Dublin, Sligo and Donegal.
In Sligo, Nuala stays with a family of brothers under the pretence that she is going to marry one of them; in Donegal Gertie is introduced to poteen smuggling and in Dublin the reader is given a glimpse of the infamous Magdalene Laundries/Asylums.
There will be heartbreak, rape and incest but it is very minimal as there is a lot of comedy, both in situations and dialogue, and the question as to what Gertie was doing in Dublin on that first day of Spring will be answered. So take the novel Who Was Gertie Ford? the next time you take a train ride but be careful – you may be so engrossed you'll miss your stop!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Gertie-Ford-Chris-Sullivan-ebook/dp/B004BA5FBO/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Who+was+gertie+ford&qid=1579136421&sr=8-2

Death of the King -

 

       

                                 King George VI

I put this up last year but I noticed some hits today so copied and pasted – after a quick brush up - with the royal family in the news.

Here we have a little story set in 1952 – and it's true! A little eight year old boy with the name of Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan was sitting in class at school. Christopher was his Christian name, being a Christian but not the kind of Christian as the school he was attending - and as he was from an Irish immigrant family he was a Catholic – was being the operative word these days in any case.

Thomas was the second name on the birth certificate and Joseph the name on the Baptism certificate. Owen came later, when he was confirmed, and when the teacher asked for full names, in the senior school, he gave him all the names, and was known as that to that teacher forever; especially when he pulled the little side burns of the little boy and said 'so what's your answer to that, Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan? Something witty? Something Irish?'

But enough of that let's go back to 1952.

February 6^th 1952 little Christopher was sitting in class wanting a wee wee; the teacher on this occasion said it was OK for him to go and off he went.

On that same day, Raymond Simmonds was playing the wag from school; playing the wag being the vernacular for playing truant, although playing truant is usually knocking time off from school without your parents' permission. In Raymond's case I think his mother kept him from school that day.

So when I came out of the boys' lavatory – me being Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan - there was Raymond Simmonds sitting on the school steps.

On that day, the first thing Raymond Simmonds said to me was 'The King is dead.'

We knew, even at my tender age of eight, that the king had been ill and in fact he had died in his sleep that morning.

There are two things I remember about the King: one was that he had the same birthday as me – December fourteenth – and the other was that I thought he looked like Gary Cooper.

So now (or then) I knew what the teacher didn't know, nor the rest of the class or any of the other teachers.

It may have been the only time in my life when I was the smartest guy in the room?

If I went in to class and said something I would be asked how I knew and that would get Raymond Simmonds into trouble as I would have to tell - so I kept it to myself for a while.

Sitting in front of me was Gillian Balmond and next to her was Winifred Bryant; even at that age I was deeply in love with both of them. They would turn around to chat and I would flirt in my little baby ways and eventually, that day, I had to tell one of them about the King.

I can't remember which one I told but when I did, she told the other and the other answered back 'Now Princess Elizabeth will be Queen.'

We went home for lunch and of course it was all true.

There were no cell phones in those days, no Internet and no social media.

Everything seemed safe and at eight I would walk home by myself, with maybe other kids, and maybe a half mile walk and sometimes even raining - or in the snow.

Mothers were at home to feed and love us and the 50s never seemed dismal to me or in black and white.

It's great me being able to publish this on the Internet and the 210,633 (so far) hits from people who read it but look what it has done and the number of zombies it has produced – millennials don't even know how to use a can opener.

On that day mothers outside the school told their children the bad news; the King is dead. Some kids would cry; some of those kids wouldn't even know who the King was as they were too young but the grown ups certainly did.

The King's wife, Queen Elizabeth, who then became The Queen Mother, vernacular for the Queen's Mother, always, till the end of her long life, blamed the late King's brother David (Edward VIII) who abdicated because of his involvement with Mrs Simpson. She blamed him for the death of her husband. She never wanted to be the Queen to Bertie's king (his real name being Albert) - as she wasn't Queen as the current Elizabeth is. She never wanted that as they were happy as they were bringing up their two little girls to live, perhaps, as Princess Anne does now with her husband and children not even taking titles and living relatively normal lives.

A lot of people said Mrs Simpson did a great service to Britain by taking such a dangerous and naïve man out of the running.

The public liked him even though he abandoned Britain during the war, leaving his younger brother and his wife, The King and Queen, in Britain. 

During some of the war, David (Edward VIII) lived in America and whilst Churchill was trying to persuade Roosevelt to enter America into the war David, who sympathised with the Nazis together with the air pioneer Charles Lindbergh, tried to get America on the German side; now if you don't believe this look it up.

In fact at one point Lindbergh was considering running for President – if you think Trump is bad just ponder on that for a moment.

[I did have a photo here of Edward VIII with Charles Lindberg last time, but didn't bother this time.]

Times changed a couple of years after the King died. James Dean became the first American teenager and when the draft finished – the call up – it produced plays like Look Back in Anger, music like the blues and Rock'n'Roll and, eventually, The Beatles.

I loved the influx of Jamaicans into our neighbourhood with their great double breasted suits – I remember light blue suits – with their casual walks and great music and their laughter. Even today they are still laughing even though they were treated terribly for many years and with the Windrush scandal some who have been here ever since found they couldn't get passports to get back in to the country after visiting their homeland.

Freddy Finglas, the left handed fiddle player from Finglas.

I was thinking, looking at Paul McCartney playing his guitar left handed, and the fact that one of my grandsons plays it that way too, that the guitar must be the only ambidextrous instrument that exists – well I suppose you could play a harmonica upside down having treble on the left side, but you couldn't turn a piano upside down.

I was wondering why there are no left hand violinists in any of the orchestras I've been to see – and listen to – and the fact is left handed people have to hold it the right handed way, and that goes with all classical bow instruments. It would look silly in any case with one violinist holding it the other way.

Now this got me thinking of a fella I knew in Dublin called Freddy Finglas; now Finglas is a place just north of Dublin and I remember it as fields and trees, rivers and streams but Freddy Finglas wasn't his real name – I always called him Freddy Finglas because that was where he was from.

When he was a boy, Freddy was walking along the Royal Canal in Dublin and in a pile of garbage, that some eejit had dropped there, he saw a violin lying there with the old cans and pillow cases, bits of paper and old fag packets.

He could see it was an old violin and it seemed in good order. Freddy had listened to fiddle players in the streets of Dublin and he could hear them whenever he stood outside the pub waiting for his Da to come out. He never knew which Da would come out of that pub; it could be the nice and lovely Da or it could be the drunk. When it was the drunk, Freddy knew well to stay clear of him and sometimes he would get a crack on the back of the head from him for looking at him funny – or anything else trivial. 'who are you looking at?' came the cry from the old spunker and smack on the back of Freddy's head. There were times when you could hear the clatter. People would pass by them in the street and see that Freddy was getting a crack and wouldn't mind it, thinking that the little fella must have done something wrong to deserve such a crack. Well there is never any reason for a child to be hit like that and it would have served his Da right if someone had come along and knocked the shite out of him. That's what it was like in those days and what it amounted to was bullying and booze – the striking of a child is now against the law and it should be.

Freddy took the violin home and cleaned it up. He bought some strings from a shop in O'Connell Street and the fella in the shop gave him a tuning fork so he could make it sound right and a how to book so he could make something of it.

It didn't take long before Freddy could get a tune out of his instrument, not much of a tune as he didn't have a bow. He was aware he needed a bow but he tuned it to within an inch of the violin's life.

There is such a thing called absolute pitch, or AP, which sometimes gets called perfect pitch and this is when someone could drop a piece of cutlery onto the floor, for example, and a person with the gift can tell which note it plays.

Jack Benny, the comedian, could play a violin to a very high standard but he couldn't join any orchestra as he didn't have the gift of AP.

You can look at a violin, or any of the bow instruments, and you will see that there are no frets on the neck of them.

Freddy eventually obtained a bow and with a lot of work he taught himself how to stroke the bow across the violin and bring it back and forth, modulating the volume by applying pressure or gently stroking it lovingly across the strings.

His father would accompany Freddie with loud snores emanating from their living room as he slept in his daily stupors.

His Da worked as a postman so would finish work at midday, or so, and Freddy would have to wait for him to emerge from the pub to be let in at home. His father always let Freddy know that he had killed his mother as she had died in childbirth so the poor child existed in the state of guilt and confusion.

When children play a violin sometimes, it sounds like a cat crying in the night and when they play, the children that is, the cats can usually hear the screech and join in. Not with Freddy as he never wanted to wake his Da which is why he played so softly and gently even when he learned some jigs and reels. If ever he heard his father stir, the violin would go under his bed. Then he would hear “give us a cup of tea, will ya, for god's sake, me mouth is like a fuckin' drain!”

Well there we go and we know what might have happened if little Freddy didn't give him his tea or if it was cold; that would usually happen because the old fella would fall back to sleep but it didn't prevent the larruping little Freddie would get. He would also have to get up in the mornings and light the fire, after bringing in the coal, in all weathers.

But these things didn't worry Freddie that much as he didn't know any different.

One day he took his violin with him to school and the teacher asked him to play in front of the class and the kids loved it – so did the teacher and she told him about a teacher in Dublin who might help out with some music lessons but Freddy had no way to get into Dublin as he knew his father would never hear of such a thing.

After school that day he went straight to the pub to meet his father and wrapped the violin in a big piece of cloth as he didn't have time to hide it anywhere else so when his father popped his head out of the pub, to see if Freddy was there, he wanted to know what was in the bag by demanding Freddie to open it – which he did.

'Where did you get that?'

'I found it.' said Freddie.

'Found it, you're a bleedin' liar' said his Da 'where did you get it?'

'I found it in a bag of rubbish down by the canal.'

'Found it' said his father 'can you play it?'

'Yes' said Freddy.

'You bleedin' liar – you just robbed it.'

'No I didn't Da; honest I didn't'

'Let me hear you play it then.'

There was a tear in little Freddy's eye as he knew if his father got hold of it he would destroy it.

'Play it' he said again.

Freddy took the instrument out of the home made bag and showed it to his father; 'where did you get this, you bleedin' liar?'

'I found it, I said.'

'What do you mean you said?' said the Da 'are you defying me?'

'No' said Freddy 'no!'

His father held the violin out at arm's length and said to Freddy 'play it.'

Very nervously Freddy played the violin; a little tentatively at first and then with more confidence. He played a slow lament right to the very end of the air.

His father looked very seriously at him; he didn't know what to think or even say; Freddy hung on to his beloved violin and looked at his Da who said 'right – wait for me out here and I'll soon see about your fiddle when I get out – in the meantime stay here and play it and if I hear it stop I'll be out to you.'

When he went back into the pub, Freddy stayed there and played his whole repertoire.

The bag, which was really a blanket, was laying on the floor next to him and as people passed by they would put coins into it – Freddy would notice this and thanked those people who left money.

By the time his Da came out of the pub, in one of the worst moods little Freddy had seen, there was quite a lot of money on the blanket.

'What's this?' said his Da, and started picking the money up and cupped it into his hands; 'ah it's not a fiddle you have there; it's a golden goose' and with that he put the money into his coat pocket.

'Now' he said 'give me that fiddle.'

Freddy wouldn't let it go and stared at his dad.

'Defying me are you, you little bastard – Give it here' he shouted and made a grab for the violin.

'No – no' shouted Freddy and held on to it with all his might.

His father pulled one way and Freddy pulled the other. It seemed that Freddy had mustered up strength from the centre of the earth which he could feel surging through his body and no matter how hard his father pulled the harder Freddy held on; but Freddy's father was drunk and not steady on his feet and after one huge pull his hand slipped from the violin and he teetered backwards and hit his head on a drainpipe knocking him unconscious. As he fell the money fell from his pocket and spilled back on to the blanket.

Freddie looked at his father spark out next to the pub wall. There was nobody about and nobody he could turn to for help so he went up to his dad and could see no movement.

'I've killed my Da' he sobbed 'I've killed him.'

He didn't know what to do; he shook his father but there was no movement. He looked down and saw the money on the blanket – he looked around; nobody.

He wrapped the violin in the blanket and put the money in his school bag and disappeared.

Nobody knew where he went or what happened to him. His father had been knocked unconscious and then fell into a drunken stupor. He had a headache for a few days so, who knows, he might have suffered some kind of concussion but he never even looked for Freddy. He had rid himself of his burden – his shiralee.

Many years later I was in Mayfair in London. A very select area with million pound houses when the rich were buying their houses for, maybe £200,000. There was a little street market near some select restaurants and bars and as I walked towards the little market I heard the sound of some Irish music. It consisted of some great banjo playing accompanied by a fiddle player. When I reached the market the music had stopped and the buskers had gone away. I heard someone say 'those two are really good and that little bloke on the fiddle is something else.'

I hadn't thought about Freddie for years but the words the little bloke on the fiddle put me in mind of that little left handed fiddle player all those years ago.

'Where did they go?' I asked.

'Every day they go to Green Park after here' was the reply so that's where I headed.

The music came to me first and I could see in the distance that the fiddle player was left handed.

A closer look and it was, indeed, Freddy Finglas the left handed fiddle player from Finglas.

Lucky Numbers.

Every Saturday morning, Sam Norton would leave his flat, near Pinner Green, and go to the superstore just around the corner; well round the corner and up the road; a very busy road, even though it wasn't a main thoroughfare; but it had traffic lights, a little island and a kind of slip road to the store. On the left hand side there was another little street which led to a block of council flats, a halfway house for ne'er-do-wells and some kind of shelter.

The Jewish delicatessen, on the other side of the street, was a mystery to Sam as it always seemed to be closed. Sam ventured in there one day, as he loved all kinds of Jewish food, but found their bill of fare offered little more than pre-packed produce from big chain suppliers.

Sam's mission, on Saturday mornings, was to buy a lottery ticket. He would use the same numbers every week which were, 1, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 29. He knew that if he ever won the jackpot he would have to share it with many others as they must be popular numbers; but there again, other people might be like him and know that they were popular numbers and not choose them and there again, he was sure his double bluff would mean he might be the only winner after all.

Sam knew the numbers by heart but, every Saturday, he would give the clerk at the lotto desk a MyLuckyNumbers card with a bar code, which would automatically print the numbers on the lottery ticket.

That was the way he liked to do it as he thought it would bring him luck; he knew too that if he changed his numbers one week they would come up the following week. 

His wife would know the numbers in any case as number 1 was his birthday, number 7 his wife's, 14, 21 and 28 were the birthdays of their three children and they were married on the 29^th.

One Friday evening, when coming back on the Tube train from Baker Street, he noticed that The Evening Standard had not been delivered to the supermarket by the station so after a beer, and looking at the latest news on the television, he went out to the superstore around the corner to pick up a copy of the newspaper.

As he walked away from his building, the light rain hit him in the face; it didn't seem to be coming down heavily so he carried on walking for a while but then had second thoughts so he called his wife and asked her to throw down his hat.

This she did and when he caught it she suggested that he might buy the lottery ticket to save going the next day.

'No' he said 'I don't want you throwing down the card; it'll blow away.'

'You know the numbers' she said 'just fill them in.'

From the brief description above, you will know that that wasn't Sam; he would only buy his lottery ticket with the little card he used every week; he even kept a copy of how many times he had done the lottery, how much each ticket cost annually and kept it in his little drawer; he never thought to multiply the number of weeks in the year with how much each ticket cost.

So with his hat on, his ratting hat, as he called it, he wandered up to the traffic lights on Pinner Green, went around the corner and, as soon as he was passed the road restrictions of the traffic lights, he saw a man lurking around a parked car. 

He looked a bit suspicious, although Sam couldn't figure out why, but why was he messing with the lock? Also the man reacted when he saw Sam.

As Sam walked passed, matey boy walked behind him and as he walked, Sam slowed down to let the geezer overtake him. But he wouldn't pull away. He kept looking at Sam. When they were about to pass the fish'n'chip shop Sam suddenly walked in. The place was empty and the woman, who owned it, came out from the back to serve Sam.

'I just thought I'd come in and say hello' he said 'I've been away!'

'How nice' the woman said 'how are you?'

'I'm fine' said Sam 'I'll see you soon.' and he left.

He could see on the slip road, about one hundred yards ahead, the man, standing looking at the people passing.

Sam didn't look at him as he passed. He was going to pick up The Standard and go straight back home but decided to walk around the store first to give the man a chance to disappear.

On the way back there was nobody on the street; nobody at all. The man had gone and Sam walked back to Pinner Green.

It must have been about 10.00 pm when the police knocked Sam's apartment door. His wife had fallen asleep in front of the television and the knocking gave her a start.

She didn't know the time and as she went to the front door she called 'Where's your key?'

But it was the police she saw as she opened it.

The woman from the fish'n'chip shop had identified Sam when the police came in to her 'chippy' – identified his body by his clothes, more than anything else, especially his 'ratting hat.'

She told the police which apartment Sam lived in but she never knew his name.

The police weren't sure as Sam had no I.D. and it took a lot of organising and diplomacy to ascertain that Sam lived with the woman who had answered the door and in fact she was his wife.

There were no witnesses to the murder and it took a lot of red tape and extensive permissions before Sam's body was even released.

The television company called her one day, in conjunction with the police, to see if she would take part in a reconstruction programme called Crimewatch; she didn't want to have anything to do with it as she thought it would upset her.

So they filmed the programme without her but she was right about being upset especially when she saw the actor who was to act as Sam; he even wore Sam's ratting hat.

As she watched she saw the reconstruction and it showed CCTV of Sam going to the Lottery Counter to buy his ticket.

As far as she knew Sam didn't buy a ticket. There was nothing on him at all, the murderer had taken his wallet and even The Evening Standard.

She couldn't remember the lottery ticket for the week Sam died and, in fact, she hadn't even looked at the lottery since. She was with their eldest son and he wondered where the ticket was – maybe it was a winner.

There is a web page with all the results and their son looked on line to see if there had been a winner with Sam's number and sure enough he found the numbers 1, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 29 four weeks after his father had died and Sam had been right all along – there were seventeen winners.

The rest was easy – Sam's DNA was on one of the people who had claimed the prize; he lived in Wembley - or he did before they locked him up.

Journey to Oblivion.

It was a funny old journey on the tube a few minutes ago. I was reading the book I had started concerning how the brain stays active for ten minutes after your heart stops beating. It takes that long for the blood to stop circulating.

I was leaning against the double doors which slide open to let people off and I got so comfortable standing there, reading my book, that I actually felt I was in the location of the book; Istanbul.

The two red doors - above.

I'm not one of those who wears head phones to block everybody out in my travels in fact I quite like the noise of the rhythm of the train as it goes over the tracks. Sometimes the train goes round a bend when the track bends and then straightens up later. I never hold on to anything as I like to judge whether I can stop from falling by tensing the muscles in my thighs and I think it's good for those muscles.

I knew a fella once who told me if I want to get fit and keep fit I should get to know what each muscle is called and work on it and I got to thinking about that and it occurred to me that you don't have to know anything of the sort; I mean the crow doesn't know it is a crow does he and what could be more knowledgable about crows than the crow itself.

I noticed that the train was full and all bits of space were covered by people. In this situation I don't like to sit down; I can't stand the distance between me, when I'm sitting down, and some man's arse. I know it's a strange thought but just imagine how you'd feel if that arse farted.

So I was miles away leaning against the doors when, for some reason, they parted and threw me out on to the track. The only sensation I felt was a big blur and a kind of deafness in my ears which started with a big wind and then silence.

I knew I was a gonna before I hit the track and what seemed to make it really real was the fact that I didn't feel any pain – not one little bit. I couldn't see but I knew my brain was going to tick over like a hot electric two bar electric fire that suddenly gets switched off; it stays warm for a while. I wasn't sure what I could do besides think so I tried my hardest to figure what I could do. I remember reading something about telekinesis where certain people could make things move by using their brain but I knew, or thought I knew, that I would only have memory so it was a surprise to me when I discovered that my brain was trying to fool me by flooding my thoughts with memory so I wouldn't notice when it 'ran out of fuel.'

Telekinesis! That was it I had to think hard in the ten minutes I had left to see if I could contact my loved ones and let them know that . . . . what? 

That I was all right?

But I wasn't all right.

And are they loved ones?

My body no longer had anything to do with me and I didn't even know where it was as I could no longer hear. But if I really concentrated really let my mind try and move something somewhere something near my loved ones in Manchester that somewhere in London between Baker Street Tube Station and Finchley Road I had expired. At least they wouldn't be searching for me in all corners of the earth because I had nothing on me to say who I was – really was – so there had to be some way of letting them know.

What could I do with my mind – how powerful is it?

I thought of Vernon Street in Manchester a street in Hightown which may not even be there any more. Other streets there Bellott Street, Waterloo Road, Brideoak Street; all in Manchester 8.

What good did it do me to think of those streets?

How could I ever even try to contact them in such a short time – and to say what?

In Bellott Street there used to be a large piece of waste ground and it was black. It was obviously bombed during the war and one day, as a child, I fell off the top of a car which had been dumped. I cut my wrist quite badly and had to go to hospital. There was blood all over the place even on the black earth and nobody had cleaned it away.

But what does that have to do with anything?

I thought about it thought what happened to my blood, the blood of a child and that blood because it was from a cut was the kind of healing blood with antibodies which would mend the wound, make sure my wrist wasn't going to get infected with something nasty.

In fact the blood did do its job and I had no infection but . . . . . my blood was spilled on to the black earth; what did it do for the earth did anything grow in it or from it?

What was I thinking?

Where was I going with this?

My brain continued filling my mind with nostalgic thoughts; maybe this is what they mean when they say as you die your whole life flashes in front of you – but how would they know if they hadn't died?

At the eye hospital, when you have a sight test they have a thing in the shape of a Halloween mask which you hold over your eyes. One side is plain and the other is full of tiny holes. So if they are unsure about your sight they test you with that little mask. Looking through the side with holes you will find that things become clearer which gives them a better idea about your sight. This is because it cuts out all peripheral vision.

Many a time when I have been standing on the platform of the tube station I can see in the distance the information about the next train; where it's going to and what time. But as it was so far away I couldn't make out the detail so I would close my fist, slightly, leaving room along the palm of my hand to make a little funnel that I can see through and the information becomes as clear as a bell. The reason: the peripheral sight has been cut.

All my life my brain has been looking after the whole of my body, sending messages to get my legs to move, to tell my finger to scratch my head and telling me to duck when a snowball is thrown at me which is something I always hated. I went through the whole of my life without every having a serious falling out except the time someone threw a snowball at my face. My brain didn't see it coming so I suffered.

My brain, at the moment, doesn't have any jobs to do at all apart from trying to keep the fact that I am about to die out of my thoughts.

It does it to everybody every day of everybody's life. It tells its host that the 'thing' never happens to people like you; you know winning the lottery, getting run over by a bus or that the cancer will really kill you. It's a shield.

So I will try and take that duty away from my brain, all the peripheral stuff, just like the eye test, will go and I can concentrate on telekinesis – but what should I try to move?

Maybe my imagination maybe some kind of virtual reality but what good would that do me even if I could achieve it.

There are two tall buildings one is the shard near London Bridge in London and the other is the Empire State Building in New York City. Each of those buildings charge visitors to get in the lifts, or elevators if you like, to go to the top. But each of them take a photo of the guests in front of a photo of each building then when you get to the top of the shard there is a man with a virtual reality mask who charges people to wear it; why don't they just go up and look out instead?

Right back to the planning: Stephen Hawking, Professor Stephen Hawking, would communicate with a little piece of equipment attached to a muscle in his jaw. This muscle would enable him to speak. He chose the default voice even when he could change it so that's why he spoke with that monotone.

I'm not sure what that piece of information is going to do for me I really don't.

I don't even know how long I have left as the oxygen in the blood must be running out soon. I suppose planning for the future when you are already dead is the height of optimism but it saved me thinking about the terrible orphanage in Manchester gave me hope and – oh dear it's going. It's going fast and I can feel it!

© 2019 Chris Sullivan

Halcyon Days on the Post Office Motor Bikes.

Hi folks: I wrote this in 2011 and for some reason it is being widely read again so I thought I would re issue it here. I have made the font different from the one before – Ariel Black 14 - easier to see. 

I was living in Hollywood, California, when I wrote this, about to return to London and Brexit and at the time of writing this I had never heard the word let alone know what it meant.

I got a great kick reading it just now so I hope you enjoy it.

Aged 18 the day before I was going on my SAS selection course I was forced into a bag and my hair parted down the middle - boys will be wags!!!

I was driving around here yesterday in the sunshine, with the sun roof open and really enjoying the bends in the road and listening to The Chieftains on the stereo, and my mind went back to the days I worked for the post office in Birmingham riding a motorbike.

I remembered doing the same thing then; the sun was beating down onto my crash helmet as opposed to my white hair but I got the same feeling of gratification which you get sometimes when you enjoy riding or driving.

Driving is possible to enjoy which is why I don't use freeways or motorways unless I have to; there have to be bends in the road and a certain amount of variety with regards to hills and valleys and because of this you concentrate on the enjoyment of actually driving.

I can't understand people who use cruise control and just sit there wishing the journey would be over – wishing their lives away.

Of course it's different if you're driving with children and their 'are we there yet' comments. I am all for putting DVD players in cars and SUVs (with head sets) for children to look at as more accidents are caused by parents looking at the children in the mirror, to make sure they're okay, than anything else.

There's a mini biography of me on the Internet Movie Data Base and it says that before I was an actor I (he) had the 'best job of his life delivering telegrams for the post office' – that is a true statement and I remember the time when I actually felt it and said to myself 'I will never have a better job than this ever' and I was right.

It was obviously on a summer's day and I had to go along a dual carriageway on Bristol Road South in a suburb south west of Birmingham; I turned left off the main drag onto a road, I have forgotten the name of, but it was full of bends, twists and turns and I was going down a slight hill; the bends were just right so I could fully open the throttle and swung left and right, banking over each time with the foot rests coming very close to the ground. What a job, I thought. I was my own boss – we all were when we were on the road – and I didn't have a care in the world.

Well I cared very much for a girl I used to meet in Rose's Cafe in Selly Oak; that cafe was on Bristol Road in the main high street of the Selly Oak suburb. It was a cafe with a great jukebox and I would drive everybody crazy by playing Love Letters by Kitty Lister on it – it just wasn't rock 'n' roll but listen to it today and see how great it sounds.

The office, we worked out of, was in Selly Oak and when we entered the yard at the back of the office we had to turn off the main street and if there were any girls looking some of us would let the foot rests scrape along the floor. The footrests were made of steel and the street made of concrete and what do you get when that happens? Sparks! That's right.

So the 16 and 17 year old girls would see us ride up and the sparks flying which looked very impressive to our youthful minds; especially in the dark.

I had another little trick I used to do: I would rest the motorbike on the concrete floor of the space where we garaged our bikes and open the throttle turning the handle bars slightly in. This would cause the bike to skid and spin around in a circle and as I would put the head lights on, it looked like the wall of death with those sparks flying, the engine revving and the supervisor yelling at me to stop.

When I stopped I took the crash helmet off and walked into the office feeling like John Wayne or James Dean; or what I thought was like them.

Of course I had filled the place with exhaust fumes but it didn't matter to me; I was young and I was going to live forever and in any case the exhaust fumes didn't bother me as I lit up a cigarette and moved to take my riding gear off in the locker room where we also drank tea and broke each other's balls.

We would drive the supervisors up the wall but what did they expect? We were mad headed 16 and 17 year olds with motor bikes on our minds half the time and sex the other half.

One of the supervisors was a very sexy girl from the north of Ireland who was in her late twenties and was the Brigitte Bardot of Belfast as far as I was concerned. She hardly looked at me but she would go weak at the knees if ever she heard the voice of Frank Sinatra. She dated one of the lads but he was a tall good looking fella who looked a bit like Elvis.

These supervisors were only in charge of us after six in the evenings when the proper supervisor would go home; they were actually telegraphists who received and sent telegrams by sticking the tape onto the telegram form (photo below), putting them into the telegram envelope and giving them to us to deliver; we got to know every street, alley, crescent and avenue in the Birmingham postal districts of 15, 16, 17, 29, 30, 31 and the suburbs of Rednal and Rubery.

There was a rock singer in the area called Jimmy Powell who suddenly shot to fame with a minor hit called Sugar Baby and another supervisor, called Tinkerbell Jackson, said that I could sing as good as Jimmy Powell as she'd heard me when I must have been singing to myself. 'You can sing better than he can – I've heard you do your Little Richard.'

Hummm, I thought, that's what she thinks of my Frank Sinatra, which I was trying to perfect for some reason!!!!

Most of the telegrams we delivered were to businesses and lots to weddings and birthdays but some were bad news; sometimes a supervisor or telegraphist would tell us it was bad news and to 'make sure the person is not by themselves.' Sometimes we would knock next door if we knew it was some old lady by herself to try to break the bad news gently. There were hardly any phones in those days – hardly any land lines don't mind mobile phones!! God however did we manage?

One or two people would scream when they saw us coming as they knew it was bad news; must have given some of us complexes.

The weather wasn't always so nice and sometimes we had 50 or 60 telegrams to deliver and maybe some express packets too which we kept in our paniers; it rained, the roads became slippy we would skid on a manhole cover and come off. We hit lorries, buses, cars and it is a wonder none of us were killed. We were taken to hospital, sometimes detained, sometimes in a coma or concussion but we all survived.

I was only taken to hospital once when a truck turned right in front of me without signalling as I was about to overtake him; as he hit me, one of the hooks that they use to tie rope to on the side snagged under my gauntlet and twisted my arm around. The driver didn't even know he'd hit me and was quite content to carry in driving which would have dragged me under the rear wheel but I shouted something very apt to stop him; the first thing that came into my head which was 'you stupid oaf!' Not a word I'd used before or since.

I tore the tendons in my arm and had a few days off work.

Accidents always seemed to happen in hazy lazy weather; we rode in the snow and ice and terrible rain conditions but it was the sunny days we should have been watching for.

There are no more telegrams now they have gone the way of the dodo and are replaced by every other means of communication. No more Rosie's Café in Selly Oak and no more hanging around in there playing on the one armed bandit and the jukebox.

The girl, I mentioned earlier, would come and sit with me every night and we would talk. Her friend would talk to the other telegram lads – they called us wags for some reason. I never asked her out on a proper date; I don't know why but I would get a kiss and a cuddle when I left her at the bus stop. That's what it was like in those days you just dropped them off at the bus stop.

A lot of my pals stayed on at the post office but it wasn't for me; I didn't like the job you had to do when they 'retired you' from the motorbikes at 18 – a postman.

I went to drama school to study speech, drama, dancing, singing and sword fighting and later on I went back to school to study sociology, English Literature and Film Studies and ended up writing this for you – hope you enjoyed it?

telegram from 1944