Book of the Month - The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan. Full review here.

What do you still carry forward from your childhood and what have you discarded? I remember thinking that making ‘pizza’ by grilling a baguette with cheese, onion and tomato paste was the height of culinary taste. I remember being taught to never go into debt. That buying cheap and cheerful was best. I remember being demonstrated that power wielding and emotional blackmail were how you got what you want.

Fiction Bite - Sunrise by the lake

‘My father used to beat me,’ His voice floated just above the lap of the waves against the pier. ’He’d sink his fists into my scrawny, juvenile chest, then he’d start drinking. That’s when you knew it was going to be a bad night.’

He pulled the ropes tight around my wrists, locking them down with a biting knot.

‘When I got bigger,’ he continued, ‘I fought back. I bust a tooth clean out of his jaw, so he tied me to the boiler in the basement. He whipped me with a plug and the prongs bit so deep into my flesh I’ve still got gouges.’

A heavy chain tumbled onto the decking. He crouched and began coiling it around my legs.

‘One night, after he’d drunk himself into a stupor, I scraped my bloody husk off the floor and snuck into his room. Ma was heaped in a corner, asleep on a blood-soaked towel. His bloated body sprawled across the bed, spreadeagled in his obesity.’

He gave the chains a tug to check they wouldn’t move, stepped back and smiled.

‘I tied him to the bedposts and castrated him. The neighbours were used to screaming, I bet they didn’t even blink.’

I thunked into the bottom of the boat. The engine spluttered to life, and we headed out into the dusky morning.

‘After that, I knew I could stand up for myself, and others like me. When I saw a kid at school with weekly bruises, I’d get involved. I was their hero. Super-fricking-man for beat-up kids.’

He propped me up on the gunwales. I teetered over the edge, choking on the oily rag he’d shoved inside my taped mouth. So trussed up I struggled to wriggle.

‘I wanted to help, officer. Just like you.’

He smiled and let go.

The water was cold.

And dark.

Quote of the Week

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Final Words

Some of my views have remained unchanged since my childhood. Books are still my best friends, and Babybels are best warmed in a trouser pocket for half an hour before eating (try it before you despair). Others, I’ve adapted, adjusted or replaced. I wonder, when do we take ownership of our views and cut ourselves away from the conditioning of our childhood. Is there a point where we can say ‘Whatever I was then, now I am my own person. One I have decided to be.’

With Love

Joe

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