I am a part of that post war, baby-boom, privileged generation – except it wasn’t quite like that for everyone.
Silver spoons to sup soup were few and far between in the suburban hinterland between North Kent and London. The most common weed on our pavements was wheat, still trying to break through the asphalt from the corn fields our suburb replaced. Prefabricated building littered the area for those who had lost their homes in the air raids in London, and half ruined buildings and bomb sites were our adventure playgrounds.
They were a lot of children. That meant many potential friends and about twice as many potential enemies for an isolated kid who didn’t understand social interactions. Many years later I was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum (but only lightly touched).
I was educated at a now vanished Grammar School and subsequently at the University of the Arts, London. At my graduation show I was recruited by a publishing company after a cursory interview in a room with no windows (thinking back, it might have been a cupboard).
I left that company a couple of years later and founded an advertising agency in Bristol with a business partner as equally confused by life as I was. But that was all a bit too serious, and it only lasted four years. Since then I have worked as a freelance creative on commissions from publishers, book packagers, corporations, manufacturers, tourism boards, charities, theatres, the NHS, car manufacturers, various museums and several festivals – I’ve lost track of the complete list.
Interspersed with this work I have lectured in communication, drawn humorous postcards, worked in youth theatre and in educational storytelling groups. Amidst all this, I managed to marry, stay married, raise two children, two cats, several fish and, of course, I write novels, short stories and poetry.
But why born in black and white (or monochrome)
During the war, imports of cloth dyes were cancelled, shipping conveys were reserved for essentials. After the war most school uniforms were shades of grey. At my school we had dull blue blazers to brighten the effect of black shoes, grey socks, grey pullovers, grey shorts or trousers and white shirts. Photography was mostly black and white, as were all television programmes, and even newsreels and supporting features at the cinema (in 1956 only one in five films were shot in colour)
When I look back at my childhood, I remember it in black and white.