40-Something Firefly

  Marten's Grove Park So this post is the first of several that will be more of a memoir format, not that anything really interesting happened until I was 17 (Clean cut grammar school prefect starts joyriding in stolen cars and discovering sex with a gorgeous drug dealer met in The Venue in New Cross - not earth shattering off the rails stuff but pretty exotic for a square dweeb from sleepy Barnehurst in Kent, England). I was born on an apparently scorching hot August day to loving "normal parents." Mum is still alive, but Dad died 15 years ago. They met when they were both working at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, courted for a short time and married in the local Catholic church. Their first home was in Blackheath but by 1974 they had decided to put down roots in a 1930s semi in Bexley. My brother came first and I followed three years later. There was nothing exceptional about my birth, the only noteworthy thing being that the ward sister wrote my name on the

The Map I always wanted to write and I have written every day of my life but not really WRITTEN like  a journalist or a novelist. My writing experience has been more like signing a cheque, adding to the never end to do list in my journal or scribbling my autograph on the doorstep for my local Amazon delivery driver. It's a sad fact that I haven't quite reached the pinnacle of my teenage dream, nor the hopes of my encouraging teachers and definately not the vision my parents had chalked up. And that is why this blog has come into existence.  So like I say I'm not a journalist. I'm not a novelist. Those plans didn't escape my imagination into reality. But this account means I can at last write. And maybe someone might stumble upon it and be curious and then maybe I'll have a reader. I promise there will be better posts than this...this is practice. I am a novice after all.  Almost. I lied when I wrote that my experience is as limited as signing for  lockdown parce