Haunted Dreams
When I see them in my dreams, mostly set during my Indian childhood, my parents are younger.
And we keep meeting in familiar places, with the timing gone all awry.
But I only realise this when I wake up. Clocks and calendars have no place in dreams.
My father and I both liked sailing, and messing around in boats. We were both in the Indian hill station of Landour at different times, though I never played tennis there.
I well remember the war years in Kachrapara, when I was about eight, and when our lives revolved around the Bell Institute.
In our different ways Dad and I were both a tad rebellious. At age 15 he sought escape from his martinet of a father, a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Royal Horse Artillery, by getting himself apprenticed to a railway workshop so his family would have to leave him behind when their Indian tour was over.
The railway formed the very lifeline of our existence. My father loved trains even more than I did, and we both saw military service, he as a cadet and me with the Commonwealth forces battling communist terrorism in Malaya.
We'd been playing soldiers since we were much younger; he dressed up as a Hussar for World War One and my brother Paul and I ready for Japanese invaders in World War Two.
The music for this piece was composed and performed by my friend, the remarkable Jonathan FeBland.