Why?
"Ours is not to reason why, our is to just do or die". Alfred Lord Tennyson. In this case to do and then die!
Many people who write the story of their lives do so as public personalities, politicians, and actors or people otherwise in the public eye. Most do so having attained a grand age or upon coming to a time of rest or pause from their life's mission; for example as a minister having been dismissed from government and laying fallow on the back benches. The motives are sometimes financial but more often in the area of post-justification of past actions, or of trying to relive great moments or even to create others that might have happened given better luck or judgement thus harking back to times past in envy or nostalgia or seeking to put the historical record straight. Their readers often then scan the indexes for any possible mention of themselves and take heart, or more likely offence, at the errors or omissions of what they feel is their true place in the tome.
In writing these notes of my origins and times, I do not seem to have anything in common with these people or their particular ambitions. In 1983, as I first start to write this, I may be known to more people and for more reasons than most but I can not be considered famous, notorious or even notable on any scale that would endure from one decade to the next. Why then should I undertake this task, or even consider it worthwhile?
I see the first reason in an historical context. Being a student of past diarists, of which Samuel Pepys must be considered the best example and most notable, I have regretted that their writings do not tell more of their backgrounds or of their origins before, and fate after, their monumental efforts of recording. Pepys started writing in daily thanks at his survival of a normally-fatal operation of the time (being ‘cut of the stone’) but little was known of him before this reason to write and after his dwindling eyesight and headaches made him give up his journal. I may be wrong, but I anticipate that in this late 20th Century culture of frenetic effort and complication of life and audiovisual distraction of leisure that there may be few who last the pace of journalism year after year so that the true scale of cultural change (or cyclical stability) may be lost on those taking an interest when looking back. The second justification I see in terms of the social interest. My example is not remarkable, but it is rare, for a person to so improve his or her hand of the cards of life so as to rise through social strata, assemble a fortune by the age of 37 and then to retire and both keep and live off of that fortune to create a lifestyle which to many would seem to just about as close to the ideal as a 20th Century person could get.
In truth, it is ever difficult for the autobiographical writer to anticipate the mind of the reader and so I must conclude that the instinct that I undoubtedly share with writers past and future is that prime motive of indulgence and vein hope of post-mortality. Having brought the reader this far, the simple fact is that if you have taken an interest in reading this, then it has been my pleasure to write it!
Whither?
"Man is something that comes from woman and spends the rest of his life trying to get back in" a theme of Peter Gabriel in 1977. A better philosophy, perhaps, than Darwin's Origin of the Species.
Though my sex drive has been one of my strongest (or weakest) attributes, I can do better justice to the question of my own origin. I came out of my mother, Grace Hilda Broad, as quite a straightforward birth but shared that womb with some fibroids that were to cause me some physical non-symmetries and her a subsequent hysterectomy with its emotional and physical repercussions. The time of the event was the 3rd November 1946 and the scene Brocket Hall at Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire but that dateline wildly misleads. Firstly I was not part of Lord Brockett's lineage, or even of his retinue, and nor was I of Hertfordshire at all. I was a Londoner, the origins of my father Frederick William Broad for some generations being in St Pancras, my mother in Edmonton and then my nuclear family being settled in Tottenham, North London. This particular stately home of Brocket Hall was turned over for use as a Maternity Hospital for Londoners during the Second World War and, many of the capital's own hospitals being still bomb-damaged and others still needed for casualties this year after the war, it was still the pattern for the expectant mothers to be bussed there for the happy event. Though very common, this still gave my young mind a problem whenever I answered the question of where I came from. Amongst others who only recognised a true Londoner as being one born within the sound of Bow Bells, I seemed to be no Londoner at all and, no doubt, amongst a family and at a time when a tag of London origin was seen a social disadvantage, I got no reassurance from them. However, a Londoner, and a North Londoner at that, I certainly was and for wider family events and celebrations, the culture was of jellied eels and cockney songs.
Though North London was no doubt where my mother would have preferred, our circumstance there was certainly not preferable. The former location of my father's family, a leased guesthouse in Argyle Square in the Kings Cross, St Pancras area of Western Central London, was both desirable and comfortable before the war. Bought and run as a living following Frederick Snr’s debilitation, it was a hard but successful living but became a nightmare place during the war itself. Between two of London's largest rail stations and close to them as well, it was an ideal target for the Luftwaffe and the area soon fell victim to the German bombing raids. Living with my baby sister during the war, and with my father away in the African Campaign as an RAF ground crewman and driver, my mother was staying at Argyle Street as the air raids grew. First the V2 flying bombs, then the bombers until, in that fateful 1942 when much of London was laid waste so was our family's home and possessions. Until then, the daily routine and camaraderie of sleeping in the underground railway tunnels was the norm, but now the devastation was too much to cope with; my mother speaking of emerging in the morning to see houses flattened and one with front open and gone with staircase and curtains hanging in the air "like an open dolls house". My paternal grandfather, then dead from chronic bronchitis caused by the toxic fumes and dust of his trade as Master Decorator, had invested their money in the guest house run by my grandmother as his health expired and he had the chance, but did not take it, of buying the property outright. But not being the freeholders, they did not qualify for such compensation that there was and the bombers wrecked the family's livelihood as well as its home. The solution was for the older children to be evacuated and other Londoners with babies and youngsters to be billeted into the homes of others or to take over and rent partial houses or to be put into hastily-constructed prefabricated houses on cleared bomb sites. My mother had to cope with much of the wartime with my father's mother as father was away in Africa.
Their marriage had taken place on September 13th 1939, the very day that war had broken out leading to a virtual pantomime of trying to complete the ceremony and reception on that fateful day. There were stories of the wedding cake being carried around until a location was found no longer under a glassed dome during the sirens and blackout. My sister, Freda Grace Broad, was conceived during one of my father's rare home visits and brought up in his absence and then me during another after which, with father being stranded in Africa for lack of transport after the war, lead to my mother having to cope on her own. Perhaps it was this experience of early motherhood, perhaps it was the after effects of her hysterectomy, perhaps it was her early incidence of Huntingdon's Chorea, a contagious and then poorly-understood complication of German Measles and disease of the nervous system, or of all or none of these; but my mother was ....... well, my mother! She was strong-willed, nervy, and tempestuous - some would say neurotic - but difficult though she was, she was my mother and the greatest influence on my life; for good or for bad. It was just a pity that she spent all of this motherhood shouting at sister Freda and I and finding fault with anything we did but we just learned to live with it as we had no alternative. Her motherhood years were dominated by the need to work and by the almost pathological ambition to get the family out of London and into a house that they owned. However, she had a very alert and intelligent mind, was a writer of short stories and poems that were sometimes published in Readers Digest, and an avid crossword, puzzle and board games player.
Whence? “Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go” James Baldwin, 1987. From where we came is always a preoccupation
Then there was father, Frederick William Broad, son in turn of several generations of Frederick Broads. It was all rather too much for him. Not one of life's gladiators, unwilling to take on mother (for even if he was, he knew that it was impossible to win) he opted for the quiet life. Born of practical stock, carpenters and decorators, he trained as an engineering apprentice and had a pre-war passion for cars, craving always a Rover of his own, having had to give up his car when meeting mother. Prior to that, he was promised to another by engagement and that lady would always have been much the better choice according to his mother, and my paternal Grandmother Lily Broad. Being suitable and of “good family”, she must have seemed dull when the charismatic and passionate Gracey came on to the scene. He became a clerk and then, once enlisted, a driver for the RAF at a time when being a driver was a profession and not the norm. He first drove the regiment’s commanding officer in Kent and then drove in support of the Hurricane squadrons hopping across the African and Egyptian desert. Moving onto driving field ambulances then, he did the same in the peacetime that followed and was to continue as an Ambulanceman until his retirement. Turning down promotions to stay partners with his co-driver, they both retired as they started as just plain ambulancemen. Quiet and unassuming, shunning promotion, he was one of those willing to work shifts, to cover for Christmas Day and other Bank Holidays and, in fact, to find any opportunity to be away from mother during our waking and family hours. For he knew that, with mother, there could be no holiday, no meal, no outing that did not end up in rows, tears, and upset. His calling and his choice was to help others, cover for colleagues and there came to him the constant accolade of praise and consideration for his enemies were very few such that I never knew of one. Father’s early life was one where the matriarchs held full sway. His father, laid low by that bronchial disease, was not a great influence and it was his scout leader that was the main male role model and he took him away for camping trips. I was thus never close to him as most fathers and sons would be; we shook hands rather than kissed and cuddled. He did once take me to White Hart Lane for the football and the odd occasion fishing but these trips were rare indeed as he was not seemingly allowed or willing to be out with just me alone. It was only during my many visits to him during his terminal illness that we really got to know each other and I was there with mother when he died. They are both buried in Little Paxton cemetery in Cambridgeshire, where the granite headstones each depict a symbol and saying that is consistent with the above pen pictures.
David a Broad, Little Paxton, 11th June 1983