The dead are on the move in this grim month of February. The hearses and their convoys are passing through the village it seems in ever increasing numbers as The Grim Reaper gathers in the harvest.
Somewhere on the list is my name and it moves up towards the top irrevocably and without mercy.
I'm not as healthy as I was and some days are a real challenge, but dammit I've had a life at least, a life of many facets.
Ups and downs, failures and successes and always, always lucky not only in love but in terms of fate and circumstance. Timing it seems is everything.
I,ve been a survivor in the true meaning of the word, not only surviving the dangers of city life in a dangerous occupation but also in overcoming my own mental demons in the search for who and why I am.
Now retired, I have found peace, security and I hope a little wisdom in the rural idyll of Somerset.
A home,garden, family, music, art.
I could not ask for more.
I am extremely grateful to Lady Luck.
But herein lies the tragedy and sadness -
the millions who've been less fortunate - never had a life or one severely traumatized by loss or illness, war or crime, circumstances beyond their control. People, children who have nothing, except the clothes on their back.
I ask what make me so special that I deserve such fortune.
In truth I don't, and in no way am I special.
Millions died in world wars, mostly in the flower of their youth. I just missed that but because of them I'm a free man.
I shall remember them and all the others and weep for them, but I will never understand why it had to be this way.
