In an attempt to return to my original reason for starting this blog, I'm going to add occasional episodes that I want to remember from my pre-French life, namely Germany, the USA, Canada, Mexico etc. Many years ago, my mother gave me a bundle of A4 sheets that my father had typed, recounting events from his working life in MI6 and the Royal Navy in Raj-era India and Lebanon. I must have read them about fifty times when they unaccountably went missing. Considering these were only two ports of call in a professional life that took him to the Nuremberg trials, working as a spy in Germany and Poland in the Second World War, starring in West End plays opposite Jack Hawkins (with whom he shared digs) and an extended spell in post-war Soviet counter-espionage, it's fairly natural I should mourn the disappearance of his musings and anecdotes. I could never pretend that my words would ever be as interesting as his, but maybe my grandchildren would enjoy stories about their grandad falling into a sewer on Monkey Tree Road in Bali or sailing into Antarctic bays by midnight sun.
Life is apallingly short and we forget details which appeared so important at the time. Maybe blogging or keeping a diary is just a subconscious way of trying to learn from the past.
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