Any Questions?

The other day in England I went to the pub with my son.

Ok, no big deal – for most of us, for me though a rite of nervous passage as I don’t really do “going to pubs”.

I had a bottle of fizzy water; he had a pint of larger.

The pub, weirdly, was empty - except for Michael whom we had arranged to meet and who already had a pint; I was a minority of one.

I’m not sure how the subject arose - I think we were discussing Transpersonal Analysis (Michael is training to be a counsellor) – but somehow I mentioned my first wife.

My son looked shocked, and I don’t think it was just the beer.

He has in fact met her, a very long time ago, but I hadn’t realised that he had been so young that he wouldn’t remember; I had forgotten that he would have forgotten.

He asked me - “does mum know?” and the silence in the more or less empty pub seemed even louder, I began to regret the idea of coming out for a drink.

A couple of weeks ago someone whom I had met, over 20 years ago and subsequently lost contact with, stumbled upon my blog – we have some catching up to do.

They left me a comment that highlighted the lack of a time line in the blog – if you spend anytime amongst these pages you will enter into a labyrinth of time and memories.

So to help her, and anyone else who might be interested I sat down and tried to create just such a thing; the bitsnbobs instant time line.

It may even help my son.

So let’s go to 1986, Vancouver and an antique shop

Did you do that? (You had to click on the link.)

If you did there were two more links and if you clicked on the second of the two you would have seen the window of the antique shop, and in the reflection you would have seen Krissie as I saw her in 1986.

That’s Loui’s mum, though she wasn’t in 1986, and he wasn’t he then – he became he much later. Well, not much later but enough years later for this to be his 18th birthday party, a few months late. (you have to click again)

Now in 1986 I was working as a juggler with my partner Alex, but he wasn’t my first partner, that was John and that was years before but not as many as Woodstock. (another click).

Before Woodstock, no I mean after Woodstock – which I didn’t get to - so probably instead of Woodstock, I was looking at this, or something similar.

So that brings us, if you have been clicking on the links and making notes, to 1977 and 1978 but because I mentioned Michael at the beginning of this post we need to jump forward to 1991/92 and a small upstairs room in a pub in West London, although it might have been 1990.

No, change that, it wasn’t 1990 because in 1990 I was throwing plates at a small Swiss man!

Good that’s clear, which means that we can now talk about 1981/1982 and my first marriage, which wasn’t to this man.

This was when we (he and I though probably also her and I) got divorced.

1984 -which is where we started .

I think.

Either way it was the end of the year before the start of the year when this happened.

Which is the only thing that really matters.

Any questions?