The LIFE of BRIAN - Part 4

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The LIFE of BRIAN Part 4

We never had a car, no one around us could drive anyway, nor a telephone - even though everyone could speak, in fact, we did not have electricity for the first 14 years of my life. We had the “historic” Outside Loo, we tore off pieces of newspaper to act as a Toilet Roll, this was for 14 years, until we eventually got to the top of the Housing List and allocated into a “Council House” in the adjoining village of West Melton. I grew up so remotely that as child I thought that “Blackmen” were the fathers coming home from the Coal Mine, complete with a face black with coal dust, a pit helmet , pads fastened around their knees, clogs/boots, an empty “Snap Tin” - which when full invariably contained Bread/Jam, Bread/Dripping, Bread/Salmon Paste or the like and a non metallic container for Drinking Water. These were “Blackmen” as knew them. Not the respected coloured native South African immigrant .

Oh! I forgot to mention I that as a child I was also “nailed” to the piano stool - for at least an hour every day - from the age of 5 to 15. I could only get off that stool to get to sheet music which may have been inside the cavity under the seat (Yes even before I started attending the local Infants school I could not even read/write properly). Yes even at that age, it was envisaged that I would become a Professional Pianist despite my engineering gene which had begun to show itself in the way I excelled with my Double O size “Meccano“ Set - creating and living dreams with model bridges, railways and the like. Somewhere around the age of 8, 9, or10 my fathers brother - Uncle Len, gifted me a “Junero” set which the next step up from using the pre-formed components of a Meccano, in that the Junero was equipped with simple “metal working punches” and “tin snips” etc. to enable the user to actually create simple components necessary to build the dreams of man and boy. This was the lifestyle which moulded me into a “bit of an introvert” with huge feelings of isolation, detachment and then rushes of anxiety - yet it also gifted me in the science of lateral thinking and stimulated an extensive gift of ingenuity and capability for creating, alternative solutions/replacements