Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall. Chapter 5, Part 7: Solihull, Christmas Eve Day 1960 : Bethany and The Hollow Tree [note: Just to remind everyone where we were three weeks ago, Reggie and Stan followed Bethany’s ghost past the Ravenshaw Ford bridge, along the River Blythe, when they become enveloped […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas : A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall. Chapter 5, Part 6: Solihull, Christmas Eve Day 1960 : Serenading the Ghost The wind suddenly picked up, making a noise vaguely like the eerie “angelic” chorus in the middle of The Goon Show song “I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas” that we’d sung during […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall. Chapter 5, Part 5: Solihull, Christmas Eve Day 1960 : Bethany Appears [the featured picture is of the bridge over Ravenshaw Ford] Bolting into the woods over mud and extremely slippery grasses in dress oxfords wasn’t only risky but only marginally even manageable. We […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall. Chapter 5, Part 3: Solihull, Christmas Eve Day 1960 : The Reign of Queen Anne [the featured picture is of Stan, a detail from the book cover] Luckily, Grammer and I wouldn’t quite be alone—Stan would be there too. After the meeting at university, Dr. […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall. Chapter 5, Part 2: Solihull, Christmas Eve Day 1960 : Some Christmas [The featured picture is another of Robbin’s early studies of Reggie. We set him aside for this book. We came back to him as a prototype for the 10-year-old Reggie in the upcoming sequel, […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe From Soggyhall, Chapter 4, Edgbaston, November & Early December 1960: “Choir, Harmony, and the Coming of Stan’s ‘Didis’” Aside from allowing us to finagle Saturday mornings at the ABC Minors Club, our additional swotting paid off in that we did well in our academic studies. But as […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall, Chapter 4: Edgbaston, November & Early December 1960: The Aston Kids [the featured picture is a photo of some children at play (see lower right-hand corner) outside a block of “back-to-backs” in Birmingham, sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, most likely in Aston, but […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall, Chapter 4, Edgbaston, November & early December: “The ABC Minors Club” [Note: You “old timers” to the post will recognise the featured picture. For you more recent arrivals, it’s the ABC Edgbaston cinema (1928-1968). The home of the ABC Minors Club where Reggie and Stan […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall, Harborne, October 1960: Diwali, Part 2 We arrived early, Mum, Dad and me. Dr. Gupta had acquired several small black lights, and throughout the floors in the house, even on the walls occasionally, we saw a woman’s fluorescent footprint: Lakshmi, Facilitator of Prosperity and Good […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...
“Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall,” Chapter 3: Harborne, October 1960: Diwali, Part 1 [Note: The featured picture is an early sketch of Stan, done during a brief period when we considered having the characters look like cartoons] Diwali, the Hindu autumnal celebration of light, love and family — some said […]
You've Sparked my interest, tell me more...