People are always asking me – if only – when I am going to self-publish that difficult second book? It’s been eight years since my worst-selling book ‘Corfu not a scorcher‘ didn’t appear in a bookshop near you and received such rave reviews like “a disgrace to self-publishing“, “this bloke simply can’t write” and “why did he bother“. When is the follow-up, asked no one? The answer is always the same: soon. But like tomorrow, soon never comes. But, at last, tomorrow is definitely on the horizon and what better than a memoir written by someone hardly anyone has heard of?
It’s not just going to be any old memoir. To further lessen any interest anyone might have in it, it will be about me and my Dutch heritage. The maternal side of my family came from the Netherlands in general and Rotterdam in particular and I spent many summers there with my mum, In fact, most years we would set off to Rotterdam after the last day of the school summer term and return just before the autumn one began. Wouldn’t it be interesting – at least for me – to revisit my past and spend some time there, to see how things had changed and see all those memories come flooding back? But will they?
I have several boxes of old photos that my mum bequeathed to me when she shuffled off her mortal coil and in truth they will be absolutely useless in painting a picture of the past. There are next to none of me in Rotterdam, or anywhere else for that matter, for one simple reason: we didn’t have a camera. All the photos in the album were either taken by my Dutch Uncle or my paternal grandfather. The ones from Rotterdam all predate my birth. There are no memories to be prompted by photos. So where did I go and what did we do?
The answer is becoming all too clear: not very much. I’m doing planning and research for my stay in Rotterdam this autumn and I have been working from a virtually clean canvas. There are some places I remember well, such as the magnificent outdoor market where we went shopping twice a week, and it’s still there. The only photos are imaginary ones, tucked away in the recesses of my mind. They will have to do.
So this will probably not be much of a journey of rediscovery, more a journey of discovery because the more I plan for the trip, the less there is to remember. A memoir of a time that I either can’t remember: some memoir. And all my long lost relatives are too dead to prompt me.
Still, I’ve got to do it. I’ve seen too many lives cut short before people did the things they really wanted to do, putting off things ’til tomorrow, counting the cash and forgetting to count the passing of the years. “One day we’ll do it“, only to die, unexpectedly.
I’m going to try to tell a story that I don’t know even exists, hence the journey of discovery. Perhaps as I wander the streets of Rotterdam, sights will prompt distant recollections, even if it’s fleeting glimpse with Deja Vu. That difficult second book is coming. At last.
