While browsing Lloyd Khan's excellent blog I discovered this facility to blog through 'Google'. I enjoy the process of getting ideas into communicable forms and people close to me have for a long while tried to persuade me to express myself on the web; so here I be.
The name I have given to my blog, “Wanderings of a Sensate Man”, has been inspired by words in a recent e-mail from my friend and mentor Barry Williamson (www.magbaztravels.com) in which he referred to me as, “the epitome of the sensate man”. I am not sure what this means and am never quite sure whether Barry is being complimentary or amusing himself at my expense but the phrase has an erudite ring to it, a foil perhaps to most of what will follow.
2 comments:
An interesting man, at least (further comment must await the results of further analysis). It would be interesting to hear, even if only briefly of how someone I presume to be of Scottish origin comes to be living off-grid in Greece. But of course, the good thing about a blog is one reveals only what one wants to reveal. Maybe you are running away from something, although my hunch is more that you are seeking something, and may have found it. But I know nothing, of course.
That you know nothing I doubt, but you can know very little of me. If I retain my current enthusiasm for blogging and you continue to follow my scribblings, whether or not I wish it, you will inevitably learn more; all writers, real writers I mean, amongst who I definitely do not claim to have a place, expose much more of themselves through their fictions than can ever be learnt about them from either hagiographic or candidly treacherous biographies.
I am of London not Scottish origin. Indeed, although he numbered amongst his closest friends a Frazer-White, a Geddes and a Reid, all Scotsmen who had moved south to find London's mythically golden pavements, my occasionally xenophobic late father had quite a problem with Scottish people. Strange then that my sister, who loved her father dearly, should marry a Scotsman and beget with him three sons. She, Susan, was employed in the late 60s at the Victoria (London) branch of the Clydesdale bank where she served as secretary to the manager. Despite his being old enough to be her father she doted on the man. He was far from unattractive in a distinguished sort of way and was certainly always fashionably well groomed and well arrayed. Fortunately for my sister her employer was apparently quite happily married to a nice Scottish lady. Realising perhaps that she had as much chance of winning her idol as Tantalus had of getting his hands on the grapes, Susan sought solace in the arms a young trainee accountant at the branch, he was from Alloa and, next year, he will have been my brother-in-law for 40 years. My brother-in-law incidentally, loathed his employer with as much fervour as my sister admired him.
My father died in 1993. Mother stayed on in London for two years but as her friends became fewer and more remote, she became increasingly isolated and lonely so arrangements were made for her to move into a bungalow close to the home of my sister and brother-in-law in Dollar where he had served from the late 70s as the Clydesdale Bank's manager. I trust that this brief explanation has satisfied your interest concerning my Scottish connection. For the Greek connection you will have to keep your eye on my blog. I can promise you that eventually a comprehensive account will, gradually, unfold; albeit probably in dribs and drabs.
It is for others, not for me, to think of me running away. As for seeking, I could not have sought what I have found here because I did not know before I came of its existence. I imagine though that the First Cause may have had some idea about it!
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