Today I shall shed a manly tear at the passing of the Times Educational Supplement Opinion Forum

Today I shall shed a manly tear at the passing of the Times Educational Supplement Opinion Forum



Dear reader,

Come back with me to April 2005. I'm lazing back in an armchair in the school staffroom, my shoes off and my feet up on one of the adjacent armchairs. I'm flicking through the Times Educational Supplement when I come across an article about the TES website. Must investigate I thought. I did and that is how I discovered Opinion Forum. From that very day I have perused or posted on Opinion Forum. Something has now gone out of my life. I am bereft. If I ever get around to writing my memoirs I will not chicken out (unlike some I could mention!) of doing adequate justice to my involvement in that splendid project.


I remember my first post. It was addressed to the late Elaine C. She had been wittering on about some boring matter and I posted: 'Elaine, one day you will write an interesting post and pigs will fly over Uxbridge.' She was furious and launched into a tirade against me. Ha! Ha! Ha! Great memories. Very quickly after I got into a spat with some of Elaine C's friends, Mixu, Wordsworth, Inky et al. I'm afraid I lost it a bit and posted: 'You bitches! Call yourselves teachers? Ha! Ha! Ha! Don't make me laugh. I wouldn't give any of you a job as a cleaner in the lowest pissoir in Uxbridge.'


One of the first heavyweights I tangled with on the forum was Rob Steadman. Rob had the uncanny ability to keep four or five threads in the air at the same time. He was very knowledgeable but I had to correct him on several occasions about Oxford University. Then there was a very erudite poster named Jbloggs that I crossed swords with. He was an MFL teacher and a practising Anglican. We had a great ding-dong battle over the Church of England. It went to almost three thousand posts.


And all those usernames that I adopted: Existentialdyke, Nonexistentialdyke, Robert Pennington, Yarooleggoyoubeasts, Johnny Bluenote, Ralph Palladin, Gene Tunney, Albert Westphal, Gabriel 'Flash' Elorde, In You Go Jones etc. Then of course Big S. The Big S thread had I think the greatest ever number of posts on the forum. Remember Carol and Mr X who wore slip-on shoes with metal buckles and polo necks? OH! CAROLl! It developed into my novel, HEARTBREAK AT HILLINGDON HIGH. Then of course there was my old friend Detterling - he was posting under the username Selwyn in those days.

The first I remember of Detterling he was having a row with Sir Henry Rawlinson. I took Sir Henry's side and then Detters turned his guns on me. At the start most of the battles between me and him were over Mrs Thatcher's legacy but out of the blue Detters announced to all and sundry that he had a ginger nephew. Then all hell broke loose. Some forthright views were exchanged I can tell you. To ease things I invited Detters down for a day's fishing on the Grand Union Canal at Uxbridge. I had a spot in mind that is one of my favourites - Black Jack's Lock out towards Denham.



The Grand Union Canal towards Denham

 Black Jack's Lock

Yep, l had it all planned. I would meet Detters at Uxbridge Station, we would drive out to the Coy Carp pub and restaurant on the canal just  out beyond Harefield. I would park in the pub car park, we would have a beer and then head up towards Black Jack's Lock. This is a beautiful spot where the River Colne  flows alongside the canal. We would follow the towpath beyond Black Jack's Lock and fish the stretch out towards Denham. I would supply a Fortnum & Mason picnic hamper for lunch. Alas it was never to be. Sadly Detters declined my generous invitation. I guess here we got the first glimpse of the Tyneside bottle job he turned out to be.


Now this was August 2005. Back to the new academic year in September and there was such a buzz about Opinion Forum. Detters continued to draw a lot of flak from posters over his intransigence over his nephew. Self-righteous and inflexible he just could not be talked to. I did offer him wise and compassionate advice but would he listen? Would he hell.  It was plain to all of us that he was in serious denial - in particular about the very real dangers of the gay lifestyle. He was pompous and arrogant and of course completely dismissive of any poster who did not toe totally the pinko liberal line on these issues. What he couldn't seem to get into his Tyneside head was that posters were in no way condemning his nephew.  They were genuinely trying to help.   Indeed I myself posted: 'In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is made clear that all forms of discrimination, abuse, disrespect, prejudice, hatred, insulting remarks are to have no place among us. Often such behaviour really reveals the latent insecurities about the abuser's own sexual identity.'          
                                                                       

Anyhow life went on and we were joined by some great new posters on Opinion Forum - in particular a very learned Aberdonian, Grunwald and a Headteacher who adopted herself the username, Middlemarch. Thling (who soon transmogrified into Cuteinpuce) was a well informed Catholic, and Existentialtyke, a solicitor turned teacher, kept us up to speed with legal matters in respect of educational issues..  Two acolytes of Detterling also made their appearance at this time: an awful Scots woman from the Gorbals named Seren_dipity and Bigkid, a total Mummy's boy. (If you are reading this Bigkid I do hope you are wearing your woolly vest. In these chilly evenings you could easily go down with something.)

Now in the next month or so something quite extraordinary happened. Something that stands out in the annals of the forum. One autumn evening Detters was engaged in a right spat with the poster Jjbloggs (Not the poster Jbloggs, the MFL teacher and active C of E member ). Can't remember what the subject of the discussion was - but that's irrelevant. Suddenly Detters threw in the towel. Yes, Detters threw in the towel and announced he was too dizzy to carry on! Who could believe it? What a craven surrender! What a bottle job! Nothing like it happened before or after on Opinion Forum. What a bottle job! In the following days, lambasted from all directions for being such a lily-livered so-and-so, Detters tried to excuse his appalling lack of backbone with all sorts of bluff and bluster. No dice! He was about as convincing as Andrew Neil's hairline. My goodness! Didn't Sir Henry give him hell for months over his yellow streak!


Nevertheless I think Detters benefitted by posting about his nephew. It was a way of letting it all hang out. A catharsis if you like. And that's fine. I actually did something of the same myself. I started a thread about my disastrous first marriage - well, I shouldn't say 'marriage' as it was annulled by the Church. A marriage in effect never existed. A couple of years before I had gone through counselling to try and come to terms with agonising flashbacks to that traumatic time in my life. I found the counselling helpful. I did get some sympathetic listeners on the forum thread and I felt this was also helpful. Not that in general everyone was sympathetic to Gene  -  far from it. But did I care? Millwall fans have a chant that goes something like: Nobody likes us... we don't care. Well that goes for me also.


By early 2006 I was becoming quite well known and quite well resented on Opinion Forum. I remember getting an email from a lady who had attended one of the TES meets - in Leeds if I remember correctly - and she told me that quite a bit of the talk had been about Gene. Then in February 2006 I started the Big S thread. Wow! Was it successful? Or was it successful? A brilliant wind up, it had the pinko liberal leftists grinding their teeth in fury. Detters was incandescent with rage. It led to my novel HEARTBREAK AT HILLINGDON HIGH. Let us recall the opening:

HEARTBREAK at HILLINGDON HIGH

A sneak preview of the opening of my novel HEARTBREAK at HILLINGDON HIGH. It tells the story of Carol, a stunning blonde teaching in the English department at HH, who falls for Mr X, a handsome, curly-haired Irishman who teaches in the MFL department at this same school. Mr X has soft brown eyes which are Sanpaku and is quite a charmer with a penchant for slip-on shoes with metal buckles and polo-necked jumpers. But Mr X has a dark secret...


EXTRACT:

Deputy Head Michelle Gove strode across the central quadrangle of Hilllingdon High. It was 6. 30am, a beautiful summer morning. A faint breeze wafted across carrying on it the rich tang from the  Grand Union Canal. The breeze dislodged petal blossoms from the flowering cherry trees and they landed in flocculent dustings on the neatly trimmed lawns. The janitor, chirpy Cockney, Nobby Clarkeson, came across from his early morning opening-up doors rounds.

'What a beautiful morning Nobby,' said Michelle, 'I always love this last Friday before the summer mid-term break. It makes one feel there's a God in heaven and that all is well with the world.'

'If you say so Mrs G,' Nobby acquiesced.

'Let's hope the remainder of this term is not disrupted by any more of those public sector strikes,' said Michelle.

'Don't get me started Mrs G,' said Nobby. 'Know what? I would have any teachers who go on strike taken out and shot in front of their forms.'

'Why Nobby that is exactly the view of the SMT in this school!' exclaimed Michelle. 'But have we got a government with the guts to implement such a policy?'

'Have we hell!,' snorted Nobby and disappeared in the direction of the toilets in a jangling of keys.

Michelle carried on across the quadrangle and caught sight of leather-clad Dale 'Larry' Grayson, the Head of Drama, parking his elaborately customized Honda Gold Wing motorcycle in the car park. 'Silly old poseur,' thought Michelle, 'and I don't care much for his pinko liberal politically correct views either.'

Michelle entered the main block and coming from the ajar door of the staffroom she could hear music playing lowly - the Beach Boys singing Sloop John B. Gingerly she pushed the door open and at the far end of the staffroom saw Carol slumped across a table, her blonde hair in disarray and an Ipod player cradled in her arms.

'My God Carol! Have you been here all night?' exclaimed Michelle.

Carol raised her head from the table and looked at Michelle. Carol was devastation personified. In answer to Michelle she handed her a tear-stained letter and said:

'On my way home after the twilight INSET session last night I found this in my pigeon hole. It's from Mr X.'

Michelle read slowly:

THE HEART HAS ITS REASONS WHICH REASON CAN'T FATHOM

                                                                                             Blaise Pascal

My Dearest Carol,                  

Where do I begin?  ...

Michelle finished reading and said to herself, 'I knew those slip-on shoes with buckles and polo-necked jumpers signalled something that would end in tears.'

Michelle had that indefinable feeling that someone else was near. She looked around and standing there was the notorious staffroom gossip, Amelia Wordsworth. 'Oh my God,' thought Michelle, 'this will be all around the school before morning break.'

                                        OH CAROL  ... NEIL SEDAKA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiTtfz2PZJw&feature=related

Nine wonderful reasons to be Catholic

by Francis Phillips

posted Tuesday, 3 May 2016

'Recognise the importance of immersing oneself in a Catholic culture' (AP)

A recent comment under one of my blogs beautifully illustrated why I chose to be Catholic

Following my recent blog on David Aaronovitch’s memoir, there was a comment by someone going by the name “Terry Mushroom”. I don’t always read all the comments following blogs, but Terry’s was so good I actually wrote it down (a first for me) and wish to share it here for those who might have missed it. Someone had asked Terry the reasons for his faith and this is what he replied:

1. Watching his parents pray when he was a child and when life was hard for them. We must never underestimate the power of example – often much more powerful than argument.

2. Accompanying the sick at Lourdes. I have done this too, so recognise the importance of immersing oneself in a Catholic culture, where the sick and infirm are loved and celebrated, especially when in one’s ordinary circumstances of life euthanasia is constantly being promoted as the sensible “choice”.

3. Visiting Auschwitz and recognising that atheism has no explanation for evil. I have not done this, though I have visit a smaller Nazi transit camp in Holland, which was grim in its own way. The sheer scale of Auschwitz is what horrifies visitors ie. the sheer scale of the human capacity for evil.

4. The memory of his father’s stories of meeting an Australian priest, Fr Marsden, who was chaplain to the Australian troops forced to work on the Thailand railway in World War II. Interestingly, I had also heard of this priest, when reading the short memoir by the late Fr Hugh Thwaites SJ, describing his time as a prisoner of war of the Japanese. Then a young man, not yet a Catholic, Fr Thwaites was struck by the quiet heroism of Fr Marsden, who never failed to lift the spirits of the men under his spiritual charge, whatever the appalling circumstances they endured.

5. His recognition that no merely human institution could have survived as the Catholic Church has done these last 2000 years, given (Terry quotes Hilaire Belloc here) the evidence of its frequent “knavish imbecility.” This is not the first argument one would employ in defending the Church, but it still has a grimly amusing force.

6. His sense of the “awesome nature” of the natural world and the marvels of science. This is a reminder to those outside the Church that we are not, as atheist scientists often seem to assume, members of the flat-earth society.

7. His love for what Catholicism has to offer in the way of confession, Scripture, the Mass, the Rosary and prayer. This reminds me that Fr Thwaites, whom I referred to above, said that if he had to choose between celebrating Mass and hearing confession he would always choose the latter – because there is nothing more joyful for a priest than to be instrumental in bringing a sinner home. Incidentally, Fr Thwaites called his memoir “Our glorious Faith and how to lose it”.
8. “Catholicism has jokes”, as well as saints such as SS John Bosco, Thomas More, Martin de Porres and Philip Neri. This is overlooked but it deserves to be highlighted. Those outside the Church often think, mistakenly, that the saints are all sad-faced, self-flagellating ascetics. As Terry’s list shows, they are actually the kind of people who can be light-hearted and makes jokes while on the scaffold. In reading Aaronvitch’s book, My Family and Other Communists, I was struck by the joyless world of Communism.

9. Terry concludes: “God gives me what I need”. He adds a comment that will reverberate for many others who follow the Herald’s website: “It’s not always easy being Catholic. Much is demanded. I lapsed for some years through sin and boredom. Sometimes one has to leave home to find it. I’m glad I’m back.”

Thank you Terry, not only for giving me an idea for a blog but for reminding me of all the reasons that I too choose to be a Catholic.

St Mary’s University launches Benedict XVI Centre to ‘play a key role in public life’

by Dan Hitchens

posted Friday, 6 May 2016

Stephen Bullivant, the director of the Benedict XVI Centre, speaks at its launch

The centre, at Britain's largest Catholic university, seeks to 'bring the riches of Catholic teaching into the national conversation'

St Mary’s University, Twickenham, Britain’s largest Catholic university, has launched a major new research centre which it hopes will play a significant role in public debate.
Speaking at a launch, the rormer education secretary Ruth Kelly said she was “convinced” that the Benedict XVI Centre “will play a key role in public life”. Kelly said the centre would have a strong Catholic identity alongside a research profile specialising in politics, economics and the social sciences.
The centre was first proposed after Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain in 2010, when he came to St Mary’s. During his visit, the Pope Emeritus spoke about the interdependence of faith and reason, and the necessity of a dialogue between religion and politics.
The centre’s director, Stephen Bullivant, who is also a contributing editor of the Catholic Herald, highlighted these principles in his speech at the launch. He said the centre would “bring the riches of the Catholic tradition of Catholic social thought, the riches of Catholic teaching on faith and reason, into the national conversation.”
The centre’s work will include a Catholic Research Forum, providing “empirically rigorous, pastorally useful research, at the service of the Church”. It has already been commissioned by the Bishops of England and Wales to research the non-religious population of the UK.
Other immediate projects include the study of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae and its aftermath – a project which will culminate in an edited volume for the 50th anniversary in 2018; a seminar series on Catholic Social Thought, Politics and Society, led by Professor Philip Booth, which will bring together the Church’s teaching with current political, economic and social questions; and a research project on non-religious belief, funded by the Templeton Foundation and carried out in collaboration with Coventry University and University College London.
The centre will also take up Benedict XVI’s call for a Courtyard of the Gentiles – a meeting-place where believers can speak to non-believers. An inaugural event is planned for later this year.
Fr Friedrich Bechina, who manages the international work of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, said he had talked about the centre with Pope Benedict and that the Pope Emeritus had give it his blessing.
Fr Bechina said a key question in increasingly secular societies was: “Where are the fora where the Church will speak openly in the public square?” He said that freedom could not be taken for granted in the light of recent legislation, but that “academic freedom is the safest place, probably, for the Church, in today’s society”.
Fr Bechina said it was appropriate that the centre took the name of the Pope Emeritus. Benedict XVI “had no fear of truth”, Fr Bechina said, but encouraged Catholics “to receive the truth wherever it is coming from”, on the understanding that no truth can ever contradict the Gospel.
St Mary’s University was founded in 1850, as one of the first acts of the newly restored Catholic hierarchy. It is the only Catholic university in London. As well as Ruth Kelly, its faculty includes Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland, and Sir Vince Cable, the former Business Secretary. The vice-chancellor, Francis Campbell, was previously Britain’s ambassador to the Holy See.
Visiting the university in 2010, Pope Benedict said that there was a place for the human and natural sciences, although they “cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor indeed can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?”’
However, the Pope Emeritus added, “The quest for the sacred does not devalue other fields of human enquiry. On the contrary, it places them in a context which magnifies their importance, as ways of responsibly exercising our stewardship over creation.”

Detterling being locked out today...

Detterling being locked out today...




I feel bad about Detterling being locked out, I really do.


But what can I do? He has not complied with my request that he apologise for that appalling insult to the memory of my late father. All I've had from him is an attempt at obfuscation. The question he asked about my father's North Atlantic missions was, and I quote: "If he did." Disgraceful!


Even now, he will always be admitted back to this blog if he belatedly apologises. He knows my email address 
bobbyslingshot8@gmail.com
 - and in fact he has contacted me at this email address under the unspeakable pseudonym of 'Alan Sphincter'.


So today at 12 noon the boom lowers on Detterling.




[Update: It looks like there are a few technical problems but the techno squad assure me that the lock out will be completed within the next twenty-four hours.]

Gene's reply to Clive's email

Gene's reply to Clive's email


G'Day Clive,


Thanks for all your compliments about my writing.


When I begin fulltime on 1st January 2017 I will start with some non fiction work. I have planned biographies of Dorothy Day and Sonia Orwell (wife of George Orwell) two formidable ladies who are now being a bit neglected. I also plan a monograph on the painting of Francis Bacon and maybe (as next year marks the hundredth anniversary) a book on the apparitions at Fatima.


It would be great to have you at one of our Friday night sessions in the Good Yarn in Uxbridge. As you know the Good Yarn is now surpassing the Soho watering holes - the Pillars Of Hercules, the Coach & Horses and the Colony Club - as the centre of London's intellectual and literary life.


I reciprocate your toast to me with a raising of a tube of Fosters to you.


All the best Clive,


GENE

Sonia Orwell

Francis Bacon

Miracle of the sun at Fatima

Dorothy Day

Had another email from Clive James...

Had another email from Clive James...





G'Day Gene,

Yes it's Clive here again. I been reading through your blog. Boy can you write? Or Boy can you write?

I note that you will become a full-time writer from 1st January 2017. Good on you cobber! Give it a burl. We need writers like you. As you know I may soon be shuffling off this mortal coil and it gives me a good feeling that someone such as yourself is around to ensure that good and original writing will continue.

I have been absolutely enthralled by Granny Barkes fell in Woolworths. I don't know If you are aware but it is causing quite a buzz in literary circles.

I love the way you handle metaphysical despair. And that ineffable way you have of communicating the effects of ennui. Sometimes I think you are something of an anachronism - that you have been born out of time. I can just see you back in 1920s Paris shooting the breeze at the left bank café tables with the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein et al.

Yesterday arvo I had a conversation about you with Germaine Greer (fine Sheila Germaine no matter what anyone says) and I told her to watch out for your star shooting through the literary firmament very soon.


So, let's sink another tube of Fosters to you Gene.


Tie me kangaroo down Sport. Keep me cockatoo cool.






Clive


Ernest Hemingway



Ezra Pound

James Joyce

Cardinal Nichols backs Polish bishops over abortion reform

by Staff Reporter

posted Monday, 2 May 2016

Cardinal Vincent Nichols (Photo: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk)

   

Cardinal Nichols said abortion could never be a 'right in conscience' because it destroys an innocent human life

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, has spoken in support of the Polish bishops’ campaign against abortion.
In his homily at a Mass for the 1050^th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland, Cardinal Nichols referred to the Polish bishops’ attempts to eliminate abortion, saying: “Some want to argue that abortion can be a right in conscience. This cannot be so because abortion is always the destruction of innocent life.”
The bishops have called for a legal ban on abortions, saying that Poland’s current law – which permits abortion in cases of rape, incest, threats to the mother’s life and some cases of disability, and permits around 200 abortions per year – could not be justified.
A new draft law would outlaw all abortions except to save the mother’s life. It has the backing of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, whose Law and Justice party has a majority in the 460-seat Sejm lower house.
The bishops also called for “programmes to ensure concrete help for parents of sick and handicapped children and those conceived through rape”.
Cardinal Nichols applauded the bishops’ call for better social support, saying: “This is the work that we all need to do to create the circumstances in which recourse to abortion is recognised for what it is: the destruction of an innocent human life and a tragic intervention into a woman’s life.” Abortion is never the best choice, the cardinal added.
Last month, a number of Catholics wrote an open letter arguing against a new law, saying that it would be “a violation of a woman’s freedom of conscience”.
One of the letter’s signatories, Tina Beattie, volunteers as an advisor to the Catholic development charity Cafod. Cafod issued a statement saying: “The opinion expressed in the letter does not represent nor reflect Cafod’s policies.”

The Sea Is My Brother: The Lost Novel, By Jack Kerouac

The Sea Is My Brother: The Lost Novel, By Jack Kerouac




Was Jack Kerouac right to be so critical of his own – until now unpublished – early scribblings, or was there some merit to his maiden voyage?

Another year, another "lost" Jack Kerouac classic.

Kerouac must be one of the most posthumously prolific authors ever. Following his death in 1969 at the age of 47, there came a flurry of poetry collections, a trend that was repeated in the early Nineties with fresh compilations such as Pomes All Sizes and San Francisco Blues.

A collection of early writing, Atop an Underwood, was produced in 1999 but it was 2002's publication of a never before seen novella, Orpheus Emerged, which heralded a period of mining of the unpublished Kerouac held by his estate, resulting in his play The Beat Generation (2005) and, two years later, the "unexpurgated" version of his classic On the Road, famously written on a continuous 120ft scroll of taped together sheets of paper in (according to Allen Ginsberg), three coffee -and-Benzedrine-fuelled weeks in 1951. Wake Up, a biography of Buddha, and Kerouac's collaboration with William S Burroughs, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks were both published in 2008.
It is, however, The Sea Is My Brother which has perhaps the most significance, being the first novel Kerouac ever wrote, while a merchant seaman in 1942-43. It is a slight affair, and less than a third of the page-count of this volume, which is filled out with other early writings, and correspondence between Kerouac and his childhood friend – and eventual brother-in-law – Sebastian Sampas. Kerouac and Sampas were the heart of what Kerouac termed the Young Prometheans, the group of writers and thinkers based around his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, who paved the way for Kerouac's role in the creation of what would become the Beat Generation.
The novella follows two characters, old-hand seaman Wesley Martin and Columbia professor Bill Everhart, who hook up and ship out for Greenland carrying war cargo – a journey that Kerouac himself undertook on the SS Dorchester. The plot is minimal, and in both style and construction the novel betrays Kerouac's immaturity as a writer. There are point-of-view switches between characters almost at random, sometimes within the same paragraph, and no one in The Sea Is My Brother ever said a line of dialogue when they could have exclaimed, called, supplied, smiled, interrupted, added or so on.
If the execution leaves much to be desired, though, the novel does show the foundations Kerouac was laying for his future work. There are wonderful bursts of Kerouackian jazz-prose which break through the strictures of the conventional novel, and even then his ear for dialogue was sharp and naturalistic.
In the main characters we can perhaps see the emerging dichotomy of the youthful Kerouac – just 20 when he started writing the novel. Wesley Martin is the archetypal "vanishing American" of Kerouac's later work; the free-spirited, wandering hobo template upon which he later pressed all kinds of mystical dimensions and which found embodiment in Kerouac's soul-brother Neal Cassady, immortalised in On the Road as Dean Moriarty. Bill Everhart is the deep thinker; the classroom philosopher seeking true experience rather than received wisdom. Both could be contained within the young Kerouac, who simultaneously craved adventure and learning and had not yet reconciled how one could inform the other.
The question remains, though, whether Kerouac would ever have wanted such an immature work released. Presumably, at the height of his fame he could have had it published – but chose not to. Indeed, according to Gerald Nicosia's biography, Memory Babe, Kerouac branded it "a crock as literature". In Ann Charters's celebrated biog, Kerouac, she quotes him as saying The Sea Is My Brother was "more an example of handwriting than of a novel", pre-empting Truman Capote's famous criticism of On the Road as "typing not writing".
The reason for Kerouac's abandonment and rejection of The Sea Is My Brother lies in his discovery, while at sea, of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga. He conceived of his own series of autobiographical novels – "one grand tale" – which led him to write his romans à clef On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels and Big Sur, for which he is rightly remembered.
Kerouac's time in the merchant navy is well documented, not least in his own final published work, Vanity of Duluoz. But that was written from the perspective of Kerouac in 1968, a year before his death, when the Beats had come and gone and he was living with his mother and his third wife, Stella Sampas, waiting for the years of drink to finally destroy him.
The real value in The Sea Is My Brother is that it shows that Kerouac didn't spring fully formed as the "King of the Beats", but had an evolution, a period of growing up and maturing, and that he – as any great writer must – certainly paid his dues.

Detterling… an ultimatum

Detterling…   an ultimatum

Detterling in the 11 years plus that I have known you, you have for the first time managed to greatly offend me and make me genuinely angry. That insult to my brave father and his brave comrades was beyond the pale.

　

You were born in 1944. Right? And at that very time my father and his brave companions were flying those North Atlantic missions so that the likes of you could be free. And now you turn around and abuse that freedom in the most malicious way. By questioning the integrity of the very man who helped set you free. You bar steward!


I have discussed this with Marianne and she was greatly upset. She met my father and liked him enormously. Sadly my father did not live long enough to see us married. Something I always regret, since he was unfortunately a witness to the trauma I went through in my first marriage.

Now Detterling you will apologise and you will apologise properly and unequivocally. I will give you until noon tomorrow to do this. If you do not comply then on your own head be it. I will reserve all options up to excluding you permanently from this blog.

RAF Killadeas, County Fermanagh in Wartime

Beaufighter over County Fermanagh