大象传媒

INTRODUCTION
"So teach us to number our days,
That we may apply our hearts Wisdom".
(Psalm XC v.12)
The capacity of the memory of each of us is simply staggering. Consider the amount of information that we each carry in our heads. Think of all the faces we recognise, the sounds and smells that we can recall, the places that we can remember and all the incidents in which we may have been either directly or indirectly involved. Think of the books that we have read, the films that we have seen, the tunes we can hum, the insults and injustices that we may have had to endure and the triumphs that we may have achieved - and so on, and so on.
Each of us alive today is at the end of a long continuous chain of ancestors who survived long enough to produce viable offspring. Each generation has suffered the trials and tribulations of life and each has had to work and battle for survival (through good times and bad) in a naturally hostile world. The quality of life that many of my generation, in the U.K. have been privileged to enjoy, is founded upon the cumulative knowledge, the sweated labour, the sacrifices and the ingenuity of our predecessors. Each individual has played some role, no matter how minor, in the history of humanity but very few have recorded their personal experiences.

It is a sad fact that when people die, their memory banks go with them and their contributions go unrecorded. It is a matter of great regret that I did not make an effort to extract and write down much more anecdotal material from both my parents before they passed away. As it is, I am forced to draw from my own memories of the yarns that they used to spin and to try and fit them into a time-frame set by dated letters and documents, supplemented by old photographs. With this in mind, I decided to record my own memories in writing before it is too late.
Memory, of course, is far from being infallibly reliable and, with the passage of time, even long-term memories can fade or become distorted and out of context. The process of recall, itself, may reinforce a memory but it can also contribute towards and replicate errors.
In relating these memories to others, it is tempting to embroider for dramatic effect and sometimes these embroideries become incorporated in the memory as facts. For these reasons, I cannot guarantee that the following personal account is entirely accurate.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.