Hi Nick, thanks for sharing, I am gong to be like the others, need the rest !!!!! (((hugs))) Well written :-)
John F. I agree with you it is a great tune, it took a long time to be able to listen to it again after the crash.
We want the rest please ...
I admire your courage to put pen to paper and share your story. Am very interested to read more and do love a happy ending.
N.O - Why apologise for Fairy Tale of New York ?! Great bit of music and quite a clever way of giving ' a soundtrack ' to the story
Yes Nick, I’m sorry I hijacked my own story. Got to say thanks to Val Skinner who proofed this first part for me a few weeks ago. So if it’s well written, it’s down to Val.
I started to read your story (thinking about my own reasons for moving) and by the time I'd got to the end I was thinking - my reasons pale into insignificance besides your story. I know its a while now since the bad bit but best wishes anyway to Nick and family for the present and future from another Nick who's enjoying life in France for many reasons.
That sounds like a good idea. The book of bits of lives.
I must say that I have never had a line to compare with the Frenchman's one, mon dieu. We ought to have a group in which we could all do life histories, after a while see if we have a book. The SFN first autobiographical collection. For me, it only comes easy now after several years of psychotherapy. That was the way I dealt drug free with manic depression caused by a drug and learned to cope with myself. We all have our ways of dealing with personal history and what my psycho used to say about sharing it has become so much easier with media like this. It is brave but doing it lets out a lot of stored 'devils' and that cannot be bad for anybody - I think.
The rest please..............if you let me read yours I'll let you read mine! Maybe this is therapy?
And the Frenchman saying "Don't worry about your father, your father is dead" is something that I will never get out of my mind.
Abigail - apart from the poetic license, the embelishment all of the events are so very true - even down to the embarassment of having the Pogues & Kirsty McColl on the cassette.
Fantastic Brian, congrats.
It sometimes is Catharine and sometimes it's (not being brutal about it) well it's happened and there is not a lot I can do to change that now. There is another kick in the teeth to come before it gets any better, but we'll move onto that in a future part two.
Frances, I followed intrepidly. I think quite a lot of people on SFN, let alone the rest of the world, have remarkable stories to tell. For all of the differences, I identify with both what Nick wrote here and what you were saying to an extent. I have never found life easy although I am like Nick and can write with humour when the story itself is full of s**t we would like to brush off.
Frances, best of luck with the book. I've passed the first hurdles with one and just had my title accepted today with only the series editor to go before contract and will hear in about a month.
I would certainly like to hear more and I think you are being incredibly brave Nick by posting about something that must still be so painful. And thanks for the postcard by the way! xx
Hi again Nick. I'm in the nasty process of demenagement. Trying to do all the crazy stuff in French like confirming insurance stuff, checking on furniture deliveries from shops, getting the power put on. Thank goodness I have my french friend helping supervise edf and the installation of placards in the cuisine. I've moved many times in my life but this move in France is different because not only is it all in a 'foreign language' but I didn't own any belongings other than a few personal ones ie. no furniture or appliances or kitchen or bathroom stuff so that all had to be researched, ordered. Phew! hopefully much will be done by the end of this weekend but I'm doing a lot of it by hand myself. Got ot organise the internet yet. Good experience I guess, for the next move whenever that is.
Opposite direction to me then, by not being apprenticed to a racing stable and becoming a jockey, I walked out on his values. He only came to Cambridge once and then he got pickled and told the Master of my college I had made the wrong choice by going there. That was on the day of my graduation ceremony and a few days after I had been told my application to continue as a postgrad had been accepted. It's the chip on my shoulder I can never swipe off.
OOps, it started in 2010.
I'll check it out Frances. I know a little of your story from what you have already said on here, but look forward to reading a bit more. Hows things turning out in the Paris suburbs?