When I was at Cathays High School, the religious insruction master, who also taught English grammar, paid particular attention to my ability to write and encouraged me, and in one summer The South Wales Echo published a story which I had written. The French Master, who also taught history, observed to the class one day that it was very strange for a young boy to write in the first person female. He did not elaborate on his remark other than it was a rare occurance, and a tool used by only a few male writers. I hadn't a clue what he was talking about, and blushed, taking his comments as a compliment.
I have taken the name Annie Cleaver to write this blog. Many years ago, when I arrived to work at Birmingham, near Broad Street there was a vast clearance of derelict buildings, leaving a red earth terrain which stretched out eerily like a vast landscape of another planet. The only building left standing was a junk shop near the road. I bought a photograph album for five shillings. It was composed of postcards from the late nineteenth century right through to the nineteen sixties.......... all addressed to Miss Annie Cleaver who lived at Hall Green. There were first world war postcards decorated with bouquets of dried flowers from the fields of Flanders. There were postcards from Paris and Berlin, and as I read them all I created a picture of who Annie Cleaver must have been. And all that remained as a testament to her existance was this album of postcards. I treasured it for years. Took it to Ireland with me. Left it in the care of an accountant friend when I crossed the Altantic. He died, and heaven knows its fate after that. I just had one postcard which must have fallen from the album, of the Hall Green faux Tudor mud and wattle house which must have belonged to the family as there is a wistful, nostalgic comment on the rear of the postcard. All that remains to define you. A postcard.