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    The Tobyjug Chronicles (Part One)
    The Tobyjug Chronicles (Part One)
    The Tobyjug Chronicles (Part One)
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    The Tobyjug Chronicles (Part One)

    By Toby Clark

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    About this ebook

    Memoirs of a Misfit: I was Conceived during the Battle of Britain, eyewateringly circumcised at birth, bombed by a Dornier 17, incendiaries, doodlebugs and the odd V2 rocket, frozen by the winter of 1947 and soaked when the thaw came at Easter time. Life could only get better after all that. Especially wen I discovered chemistry!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherToby Clark
    Release dateSep 2, 2020
    ISBN9780463485132
    The Tobyjug Chronicles (Part One)
    Author

    Toby Clark

    email tobyclark1@hotmail.com.

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      Book preview

      The Tobyjug Chronicles (Part One) - Toby Clark

      The Tobyjug Chronicles. Part one

      Smashwords Edition. Copyright Reserved Toby Clark BSc etc

      ISBN: 9780463485132

      https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1041119

      "Out, out, brief candle!

      Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

      That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

      And then is heard no more"

      (MacBeth by William Shakespeare)

      We did it at school for English Literature.

      The Tobyjug Chronicles are dedicated to the many people who have enriched my existence and whom I now bless. I shed special tears for:

      Philip Hill who died at age 21. He was my Fool in my last days at the Dunlopillo Works in Hirwaun and more importantly was Tim Howell‘s faithful companion until viral leucaemia took him away with such brutal suddenness.

      Frank Hammond age around 40. I can look him up on internet – his obituary was in the ‘Guardian‘ newspaper. He had an aortic aneurism and his heart burst when he was one third of way up Ditchling Beacon after his son Paul had challenged him not to get off and walk until he reached the top. He was riding for the British Heart Foundation.

      In his eulogy the pastor made the quotation:

      "He was a man, take him for all in all,

      I shall not look upon his like again.

      William Shakespeare,Hamlet, Act 1 scene 2

      Vale Dear Frank.

      The Tobyjug Chronicles. My autobiography.

      Chapter 1: Circumcised Me

      I was born in a Stately ‘ome – The Old Surrey Hall, Lingfield, Godstone which I quote as my birthplace on my passport along with my Medical Card No. COXB 470 and my N.I. Number ZX153514D which I have memorised because I had to quote it on those lovely overtime sheets we filled in when I worked at Southwark College. My birth date was 22nd April, between St George‘s Day and the Queen‘s birthday (though for the life of me I can never remember if it is Her real birthday or Her official one). It was a Tuesday and apparently mum‘s bed was in one of those huge inglenook fireplaces within which she said she felt ever so safe!

      My mother was fond of saying that she didn‘t know where I came from but I‘m sure either my father or the milkman had an inkling about it! I was conceived round about July 21st 1940 (a Sunday!) plus or minus a week or two but doubtless at the weekend as my Dad would have had a day off work.

      On that day, once I had been separated from my mother, I was, so I understand, separated also from the end of my little willie and probably without anaesthetic which might explain why it isn‘t quite as imposing as it otherwise might have been. My father had been similarly treated so why should his sons experience anything less! In the fullness of time, he must have thought with a certain irony that it would make better men of us. Still, in the fullness of time and experience I have come to realise that what one does with it is more important than it‘s absolute dimensions!

      M

      ap of Old Surrey Hall, Lingfield

      My mum said that on discharge from The Old Surrey Hall she was billetted with a lady who didn‘t really want her there and I didn‘t thrive. I‘m told that I was still at my birth-weight at age 3 months. She was discharged as a breastfeeding mother but I presumably wasn‘t getting enough. My aunt Hilda eventually decided that I need more and she put me on cow‘s milk which obviously did the trick or maybe I wouldn‘t be here writing this now, some 76 years later. A sobering thought! Oddly I never liked milk and didn‘t drink my free school 1/3 pint of warm, if not actually curdling stuff that we were served up with at breaktime when I was at Barnehurst County Primary School (Mrs Mumford‘s Emporium). I still have a vision of my peers guzzling it down with evident delight, red pouting lips over the bottle and a milky, warm smelling burp to finish it off.

      But I digress! My father somehow got us into the house at 14 Edendale road, the ARP had to move out to make way for us and so we came together as a family. George was returned from being an evacuee. He had been sent somewhere down the West Country and apparently was not well treated. Clothes my parents sent for him disappeared but I know nothing more of his experiences. Poor little boy, traumatised by parental separation at the age of four and with quite severe sight problems that continued to plague him all the rest of his life. Stressed and emotionally difficult, my father had little experience of parenting and mishandled him, I'm sure. I know that he beat George because it is one of my earliest memories of getting in between them to stop him. George said later on and with relish, if not actual pride that Dad took his Sam Browne belt to him for a beating.

      By contrast to George's volatile temperament I was very placid. Even from the beginning we must have been 'chalk and cheese' opposites and we never had any real empathy as siblings. It is pretty clear that he must have resented me (who could blame him?) and although I tried to be his friend later in life,

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