I was not informed by my brother that she had been admitted to hospital and discovered only by ringing round the hospitals to see if she had been. That was 10 days after admittance. When I turned up to visit her he was there, looking very ill at ease. I said we had to talk, open up a line of communication. He didn’t want to do that, and would communicate through a third party.

I suggested we forgot about bygones (again) but he didn’t want to know.

About a week later the hospital rang at  11pm to say that she had a fall would I be visiting. As she was 50 miles away I said no not that night. There was no indication of any urgency. A doctor rang an hour later and said she may not make it through the night. Just as well I didn’t drive 50 miles in the early hours or I would have met the brother as he lives locally to the hospital. He was there when she died, which was appropriate – adoring son sees out adoring mother.

He later asked by e-mail if I wanted to arrange the funeral. I said no, he could do it.

She was after all, his mother more than mine as he became number one son when he was born 10 years after me. I don’t remember any affection from my mother ever. What I do remember is a biting tongue and nastiness. That only stopped when she was put on anti phsycotic drugs when she was diagnosed with senile dementia 9 years ago.

Anyway, it’s the end of an era and I still feel a sadness - just occasionally – despite how I feel but the good thing is that I don’t have to have any further contact with the brother. Maybe I wouldn’t anyway because I hear he’s on the way out.

As for now, well there isn’t much to say. It is Goose Fair day in Tavistock today. Hundreds of stalls lining the Plymouth road, the same cheap Chinese imports the usual traffic chaos.

Strangely enough geese do have something to do with it. They are auctioned every year at this time since the 13th century.

It’s always a good thing to have plenty in on Goosy Fair day because it becomes very difficult to get across town to Morrisons supermarket. A quick downhill slide to Christmas always follows Goose Fair.

The fact that I was the only one using cine or taking pics was not because I was well off. On the contrary. It was just different priorities with scarce resources. A 3 minute cine film would cost me half of my weekly wage of £7.

In the last posting I was wondering where my first love Julie, was now. I happened to be searching the electoral roll, for which I paid £3.95 for an hour’s use – and I took a long shot and tried for a couple of others – to get my money’s worth, so to speak. Well, I was amazed that I was able to find Julie in one go, and I had a pleasant conversation with her husband of 40 years.

I then did a second search for Barry, whom Julie knew too, and I found him living just 30 miles or so from me. We had a couple of amazing conversations with each of us having the same and sometimes different memories of those times. No doubt we will meet soon.

The whole point of that exercise was to see if they wanted copies of the cine on DVD. Barry featured in most of the stuff up until 1963 and in fact the only reason that I appear on film is that Barry was quite a good cameraman – an important point when film cost was the equivalent of £80 for 3 minutes in todays wages.

The pic above from left to right. Me, Julie, Barry.

It broke my heart breaking the news to Julia – or Julie as she liked to be known  – just as it probably broke hers. Whether it was the right thing to do, well, I will never know. The marriage to Christine lasted 25 years. Julie and I were undoubtedly heading for the altar if events had not happened. Would it have lasted, would we be growing old together? Probably not, I’m not easy to live with.

Has Julie had a happy life with Myles Taylor her soldier husband? Did she have lots of babies and subsequently lots of grandchildren? Can’t help wondering. There’s one thing for sure, I would not recognise her now, nor her me. Time will have taken it’s toll on sweet sixteen and handsome young nineteen.

Things were different in those days, so no we didn’t. Girls wore cast iron knickers then, and Christine, my wife to be, was no exception. It all seems a bit silly today when you consider just ten years later the girls were at it like rabbits. Those ‘girls’, now in their mid fifties will confess to multiple pre-marital sexual relationships or encounters, I know, I’ve had a few of them. Unfortunately the bloom of youth had long passed by then, because it was when I was in my fifties that I ‘sowed the wild oats’ that I couldn’t when I was young.

As for Julia Wendoline Taylor (nee’ Green) I have quite a lot of cine film footage of her in the bloom of her youth and it would be nice to send her a video of it all. She never saw it in the first place – I didn’t have a projector until later.

• 1976                                                      2006            x Factor
  
• Average House Price

  £12,415                                            £190,051           15.3
  

• Loaf of Bread

  23p                                                        £1                   4.35
  

• Petrol

  18p per litre                                         98p                  5.44
  

• Beer

  25p                                                     £2.40                 9.60

In 1970 we bought a 4 bedroomed detached house with double garage for £6,500. I was earning around £2,500 a year with company car supplied. So, for just under 3 times my earnings I could buy a house. Mortgages were no problem. With average house prices coming upto £200,000 here in the South West I pity the young people today.

Furthermore the new house we bought in 1970, in Wells, Somerset, had a large front and back garden. The back garden I landscaped and built a swimming pool with patio areas, rockery, garden pond, lawns, and a huge vegetable garden. We sold the house in 1978 for £23,000 in order to move to the ‘Good Life’ in Cornwall. That was a mistake and another story.

Today the average new houses are built so close together you could NOT swing a cat between the houses and only just, in the garden. In fact it must be hell in the summer when windows are open and the noise from families packed 30 to the hectare (just over 2 acres) are playing music, screaming kids etc.

There’s no doubt about it the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s really were the Golden Age, never again to be repeated. Then along came Thatcher and society changed in all ways for the worse although we didn’t really think so at the time as the previous Labour Government had made a mess of things too.

(1) Rearing commercial rabbits in the early eighties, and taking anything upto 3 dozen at a time to a commercial (rabbit) slaughterhouse and processing plant. I also feel the same way about the calves I hand reared . The thought of the day I loaded them on a lorry for slaughter fills me with remorse and guilt.

(2) After the ‘good life’ experience I started a computer company. Everything was OK until I employed or became associated with the following people:

Maurice Symonds
Mike Roberts
Peter Malcolm
Chris Swallow
Frank Morris
My Brother

I was stupid and too naive. Most of them cheated and swindled me to the extent that the company folded in 1985. I will write further on all of these matters in due course.

(3) After the computer company collapse I was left with nothing to do. In desperation I once again started a business to make glassfibre products only this time I wanted to use the latest technology. I went to Alan Harper of Plastech who was selling RTM (resin transfer moulding) technology. I spent thousands developing an 8 foot dinghy. It was too complicated to be made and sold in quantity.

Alan Harper just wanted me to do it so he could tell other people it could be done and produce photographs at his seminars. He didn’t advise me ‘to keep it simple’ – which is what he should have done and what I should have done if I had known. If I had, and I made a 9′ runabout instead I would be wealthy by now. By the time I realised what I should have done it was too late. I ran out of money and that was part of the reason why I ended up in a rented property.

(4) I left my wife in 1984 for 5 months to go off with my office manager, Judith Freeguard. She thought she was on to a good thing and I was again naive. I regret that very much for the hurt it caused. I returned to the family home but we were divorced in 1991. That I do not regret and it was for other reasons anyway but I cannot visualise being married to her now.

(5) I regret wearing my hair long and in a pony tail. It was probably something to do with a complete life and belief change but it was stupid.

(6) Part of the life and belief change was a change of job; I became manager of a hostel for homeless young people. The requirement was that I lived in a flat on site. We owned two semi detached houses having moved from an expensive riverside house in Cornwall. My wife lived in one and I lived in the other. I still had a semi detached 3 bedroom house in Calstock. I should have hung onto that house come what may. Instead it was sold for £10,000 less than we paid for it because I was fed up with trying to keep tenants in there. Better to keep it empty or get better tenants.

I will be writing in detail at another time about all of the things I regret as above. I am sure there are more to be added to the list.

(1) Rearing commercial rabbits in the early eighties, and taking anything upto 3 dozen at a time to a commercial (rabbit) slaughterhouse and processing plant. I also feel the same way about the calves I hand reared . The thought of the day I loaded them on a lorry for slaughter fills me with remorse and guilt.

(2) After the ‘good life’ experience I started a computer company. Everything was OK until I employed or became associated with the following people:

Maurice Symonds
Mike Roberts
Peter Malcolm
Chris Swallow
Frank Morris
My Brother

I was stupid and too naive. Most of them cheated and swindled me to the extent that the company folded in 1985. I will write further on all of these matters in due course.

(3) After the computer company collapse I was left with nothing to do. In desperation I once again started a business to make glassfibre products only this time I wanted to use the latest technology. I went to Alan Harper of Plastech who was selling RTM (resin transfer moulding) technology. I spent thousands developing an 8 foot dinghy. It was too complicated to be made and sold in quantity.

Alan Harper just wanted me to do it so he could tell other people it could be done and produce photographs at his seminars. He didn’t advise me ‘to keep it simple’ – which is what he should have done and what I should have done if I had known. If I had, and I made a 9′ runabout instead I would be wealthy by now. By the time I realised what I should have done it was too late. I ran out of money and that was part of the reason why I ended up in a rented property.

(4) I left my wife in 1984 for 5 months to go off with my office manager, Judith Freeguard. She thought she was on to a good thing and I was again naive. I regret that very much for the hurt it caused. I returned to the family home but we were divorced in 1991. That I do not regret and it was for other reasons anyway but I cannot visualise being married to her now.

(5) I regret wearing my hair long and in a pony tail. It was probably something to do with a complete life and belief change but it was stupid.

(6) Part of the life and belief change was a change of job; I became manager of a hostel for homeless young people. The requirement was that I lived in a flat on site. We owned two semi detached houses having moved from an expensive riverside house in Cornwall. My wife lived in one and I lived in the other. I still had a semi detached 3 bedroom house in Calstock. I should have hung onto that house come what may. Instead it was sold for £10,000 less than we paid for it because I was fed up with trying to keep tenants in there. Better to keep it empty or get better tenants.

I will be writing in detail at another time about all of the things I regret as above. I am sure there are more to be added to the list.

For the last few weeks my mother has been ringing me at least twice weekly to ask me if I’m going to go to my brother’s for xmas – where she spends every xmas day. She is not capable of remembering the last conversation or the reasons why I would rather sit in a tub of icy water in a snowstorm on the top of Cox Tor than sit in my brothers sitting room on xmas day.

To placate her I have said that ‘yes, I would, if I was invited’, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t happen. I have told her repeatedly to whinge at him, not me. She has, it seems done that. The message that came back was as predicted; (1) ‘he would forgive me if I removed the nasty things I have said about him in this website’ (2) ‘he will talk to me if I remove the nasty things I have said about mother and him on the website’.

Pardon me! What about the nasty letter he sent me where he said ‘that as far as he is concerned I am dead, deceased etc … and that it was a good thing because he wouldn’t have to send me xmas cards anymore and so on’.

As I said in the item in question he is a self righteous shit. Now that is the only thing I said that could be interpreted as ‘nasty’ apart from saying that he is a ‘despicable person’. I cannot find anything else. It is after all, as he has now confirmed, quite true. I have scanned the things I have said about mother too and I’m damned if I can find anything nasty – as he has been telling her. So, he’s a manipulative liar too.

No brother, I’m not gagging for you to talk to me nor forgive me. All I ever said to mother during these weeks of anguished phone calls from her was ‘tell him that we should just forget what has been said by both sides’. I did however only say that, as I said earlier, to placate her. If the message had come back in that way maybe, just maybe mother could spend her time with happier thoughts.

The chances of that happening  were always extremely slim because he thinks he always occupies the moral high ground. And no, I will not remove what I have written because it is the truth. Try reading it again, slowly, carefully, aloud if it helps, with your glasses on and tell me what is nasty about it apart from the example I quoted above.

P.S. I did remove those phrases and ‘so called’ insults.

My mother always maintained that I ‘had a roof over my head, was warm and fed’. I’m sorry mother, but that isn’t enough, we do that sort of thing for pet rabbits. What I do not remember, ever, is any sort of affection. Maybe she couldn’t show affection because her mother never gave her any. That’s understandable but sometimes we have to make the effort to ‘break the mould’. One of the worst things a parent can do is brainwash their children against the other parent.

They don’t have to be separated for that to happen – my grandmother ‘brainwashed’ my mother against her father – but nowadays it is more common as at least half of all marriages end in divorce. The level headed majority acknowledge that children need their father/mother even though they may well hate their ex partner.

Those parents don’t attempt to ‘brainwash’ their children against the other parent because they are intelligent enough to realise it is counter productive and the child will make their own minds up eventually. Any nastiness will only come back and bite them on the nose with the child ultimately disliking the ‘brainwashing’ parent.

Using children as a ‘weapon’ when a couple part is the ultimate child rearing sin. I have a couple of friends (both women) where their ex-husbands have ‘brainwashed’ the children and used them as weapons. In both cases the ex’s are truly deranged individuals and accomplished liars. They are so good at it that they can convince outsiders that they are normal decent people. In truth they are truly evil, and not just because brainwashing children is an evil thing to do but because of their manipulation and outrageous lies.

The tragedy is that the children are growing up to be horrendously damaged individuals. My son’s ex wife is trying to brainwash her children against my son and myself in a big way. She is also manipulative and an outrageous liar.

She perjured herself in court the other day – after swearing on the bible – without batting an eyelid. She also perjured herself in the Family Court when she said I had a ‘drink problem’. Anyone who knows me would agree that it is not true. The problem with that type of person – including my two friends ex husbands is that they are so goddam self righteous that they are blinded by the light of reason.

I don’t tell lies but one of the first thing these people will do is accuse everyone else of lying. Everything I have written is the truth. Two little boys did pour their hearts out in telling myself and a lady friend what they said in ‘When Will They Ever Learn#1. They were not lying, they desperately wanted to get it out. Now they are being brainwashed and intimidated.

 Finally I will explain the purpose of these postings; it makes me feel better after suffering years of nastiness from the xDiL without being able to respond. I do know that those mentioned have read this website and will read as far as this posting at least. That’s down to human nature.

Everything I write will be factual and truthful just as everything I have written so far is. The further I go back I may only remember the ‘headlines’ but I will try to be objective and will try not to put a ‘spin’ on things. I will not knowingly write something that is not true. And remember at the end of the day ‘light is always stronger than the dark’.

I suggest that those who distort the facts are the evil one’s and will pay £100 to anyone who can find the word paedophile in ‘When Will They Ever Learn #1′

Oh, and before anyone suggests it, the article is exactly as it was written and has only been edited when I changed PFD to xDiL as a small conciliatory gesture.

It seems to me that she ‘protesteth too much’ and that I have hit a raw nerve. Who knows? It certainly makes one think, doesn’t it? And while we are on this subject what inference can we put on ‘dirty old man’? This is what she was calling me (and telling the children) before I retaliated.

Seems that some people think they can say what they want and we all should just meekly take it. Well, it doesn’t work like that. What she says is, as usual, based on lies. What I say is based on truth as told to me.