It is the time of year when we all make New Year resolutions, and then promptly break or forget them. I have not made any resolutions for a long time, knowing that I will not keep them. This year is different, because I have started with an intention, and my intention is to complete my book.

I have not written anything for a long time, not since my last blog when I wrote about my dear friend Rezza, who died last January. Since that time I have been wallowing in a slough of despond, from which I have been trying to extricate myself through various means. Now, at the beginning of a new year, I have done it.

I have recovered my self belief and my self confidence. I had lost the belief that I had a story worth telling, and any ability to actually tell it. Now I know that my story is worth telling and I am ready to start again. In another blog I may relate how I was able to regain my self belief.

At the beginning of the year I wrote a new Prologue to my book, which is called – for now –  “Journeys round my life”.  The book is in two parts, the first one, which I am calling “Journeys round my mother”, covers my life up to the age of forty six when my mother died. This is completed and I intend to publish it on Kindle. The second part, which covers the rest of my life up to the present, will be called “Journeys round my Self”. This part I have still to write.

Here is my Prologue:

“I remember a moment when I was living in Paris in the early sixties – I was in my thirties – and I had made the tremendous leap of moving to Paris, bringing my mother with me, to work in NATO.

I was sitting in a café with my Romanian friend Arlette. It was one of those cafés, probably on the Left Bank, where one could sit for hours just conversing. I had made many attempts to make some French friends, and the closest I had come to it was Arlette. She had been born in France, but had never quite managed to fit in, and we had met at a club for foreigners. She was striking to look at, with jet black curly hair and flashing brown eyes. She was flamboyant, loquacious and full of creative ideas, and I was happy to follow in her wake.

So  –  there I was  –  in this café with two of her friends, and they had given us a game to play: it was a psychological game. On a piece of paper they asked us to draw three vertical lines, evenly spaced, and one horizontal line across the middle, producing six squares. In each of these squares we had to draw a symbol, a dot, a curve, a straight line and so on. We then had to complete and add to the symbol in our own way. Each of the squares represented some aspect of our personality. I remember particularly the first one, which was a dot, and represented the Self.

I had drawn lines radiating out from the dot, and then a circular line around the rays, turning the image into a wheel.

“Oh, that’s interesting”, said one of them, “that means self development.”

“Yes, we haven’t seen that one for a long time,” said the other.

It is interesting what one forgets, and what one remembers. That I have always remembered.

I have always been an observer, one who sits on the edge of life, observing others. Since I have started to write my own story, I have become the observer of my own life, and I can now see how much I have evolved and grown from those early years. I am still evolving and growing, a fact which astonishes me and fills me with gratitude.

I find my own story a fascinating one. I hope that you, the reader, will find it too.”