Pieces of Eight: The other side of the story (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781534919785)

As a small boy - and certainly up to the time I left primary school in 1971, and to some extent after - I was a reluctant writer although an avid reader. Indeed I fell foul of my teachers in Changi Infants' School for both of these, the latter as much as the former. I had a fondness for reading everything in sight, even books that were many years too old for me, and for many years could not see the point in trying to write given the existence of so much that was already written, all of it (to my under-eleven imagination) far better than I could ever hope to match either for content or for style. This began gradually to change as I moved through my teens and into my twenties, and there was a time when I felt I did indeed have the proverbial "book in me" as early as age 20. Still, that wasn't the way that my steps were bent and I should have struggled to make a living on the laboured prose that was the best I could manage back then. Instead I joined the Civil Service and learned to program computers for a living, and relegated such writing as I was capable of most definitely to the realms of a hobby or pastime. From RAF child in Singapore to Bath schoolboy in the 1970s, to computer programmer through the 1980s and to the turn of the century, and eventually to schoolteacher, I gradually lost my reluctance to write while still retaining my eagerness to read. It is truly rare for me to pick up a book and not read it cover to cover, although I did manage to make an exception for "Moby-Dick" while marvelling to this day how Herman Melville was able to take a story about a mad sea-captain's odyssey of revenge against the monster that crippled him and make it boring. And technology at length began to offer me an improved outlet for my urge to write, since I found text many, many times easier to write by keyboard and screen than pen and paper. Now in my mid-fifties, I have grown too slow and fat for outdoor sports more strenuous than a walk with the dog, but I still enjoy my music and the occasional appearance on the amateur stage -- not that I am in any danger of ascending to great heights in those pursuits, either. I am at least blessed with a supportive wife and sons, and the parish church puts up with my well-meaning efforts as their organist.