14. Another Year Gone

It's a sure sign of advancing years when time seems to gather momentum with increasing swiftness and you think "Blimey, another year gone. Where the hell did it go?"

I must be getting on myself, as I suddenly realised that it was time for another article to be written for the Harrow Post which was due out - last week. And I hadn't done one.

Several, in fact a lot of people have been kind enough to say they like the stuff  I write, which has boosted my ego sky-high and made me feel that perhaps I had a modicum of talent in a brain which seemed to have been built in for the sole purpose of keeping my ears apart.

So, rather than have my fan club hand in their 'I like Ed' badges and switch to Tom and Jerry, I'm going to stretch their loyalty to the fullest extent and inflict upon them a very short story I wrote way back in '57 when I first felt the pangs of authorship stirring. It never got a good acclaim, and thoughts I had about being another Charles Dickens were swiftly chopped to pieces by John Bull* to whom I sent it, who politely returned it with a note which more or less said they hoped I could mold casting (I worked in a foundry) better than I could write.

Times and fashions have changed since then, the short back and sides is the exception more than the rule etc etc but the violence that was always part of human nature ain't altered. If anything is has increased so perhaps this small effort is still topical. Hope you like it.

Notes:

* Magazine. Published by Odhams Press until 1964. Maybe if they'd used Grandads' story they'd have been in business a bit longer. Ha.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bull_(magazine)

In Jennie's compilation this piece is included as #15 and the story it is introducing precedes it at  #14. As it makes for a better flow I've switched the two around, so the story will be up in the next post.