In 2015 I began writing about my childhood, growing up in a boarding school in Wells.
I thought this was a reasonably unusual upbringing and might be of some interest to someone.
Through 2015 and the much of 2016 I wrote most weeks, accumulating over 70000 words. Much of what I wrote were smallish chunks; I hoped to write enough, then edit all my writing into a coherent but short memoir about my life growing up.
Late in 2016 I stalled. I wrote intermittently for a few years. I wrote a few pieces about sport as I found these easier – the Aston Villa trial, a trip to the African Nations tournament (which has nothing to do with my childhood) , and a piece about rugby that I had first written in 2003. Writing about non sport subjects I find gruellingly hard.
In Spring 2019, frustrated with there being no progress on my ‘book’, I had the idea of re-writing the memoir based around sporting events in my life. I would describe sport I had played or watched, in roughly chronological order, and use these events as ‘hooks’ around which I could write about my family, my environment, my other memories. This approach allowed me to pick up some of my writing again. The article about watching Mansfield Town and Nottingham Forest comes out of this approach; although in the ‘book’ of my imagination I would not separate writing about Mansfield Town from say, Bristol City, but would write chronologically; so cricket and rugby and other sports would be mixed in.
I have pieces about Bristol City (and Rovers), World Cups , cricket and rugby to complete.
In Spring 2019 I was able to read the memoir of my Grandmother, Nora Peabody. This was wonderful to read. It was quite short, and I would have liked to have read more. Reading this motivated me to pick up my writing again, with the feeling that my own children and grandchildren , should there ever be any, might be interested in reading it.
In the immediate term (January 2020) I am posting a few articles on this web site. I have written much more about Wells and my childhood; some is quite personal, and I would feel nervous about publishing it; it certainly will need some editing. So, I am just starting with a few bits about Wells – sport obviously, the cellars, food, comics, some music stuff. I might post more in time. Might depend if anyone is interested.
My motive for starting this web site is to give myself a kick up the arse and to get on and write some more.
Note about the web site: this is a WordPress site. By default, WordPress sites are designed for blogs. I would rather organise my material in a different way, but for now I am stuck with what I have. I have found organising the material as a web site quite frustrating; the alternative is to start again and write my own, but that would take time too…so for now I am going with this.
Roger Peabody 