Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Glimpses
    Glimpses
    Glimpses
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Glimpses

    By Pat Fowle

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Most of one's life is not always memorable. I spent a fair amount of my past just chasing the wind, however, I can recall certain events, some of which I will share. I'll stick to glimpses.

    This is what could be described as a fragmented autobiography; a story told through noteworthy events that have occurred during a colourful life. 

    Some are mystical, some inexplicable. Short stories that involve humour, but most of all love, like threads of gold that run through a lifetime.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTroubador Publishing Ltd
    Release dateJan 28, 2022
    ISBN9781803138435
    Glimpses
    Author

    Pat Fowle

    Pat Fowle spent almost all of her married life travelling to different parts of the world and meeting interesting people, and considers herself fortunate for having done so. This was enabled by her husband’s exploration work.

    Related to Glimpses

    Related ebooks

    Design For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Blood And Water

      Nov 3, 2022

      Blood And Water
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Fearless, fabulous FERN

      Apr 7, 2022

      Fearless, fabulous FERN
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Jenni Murray’s headlines

      Aug 25, 2021

      What was it like leaving Woman’s Hour? I felt, come on – you’ve worked for the BBC for so long: for Woman’s Hour for 33 years. You’re nearly 70. If you don’t make a change now, you never will. In the last programme, I was not going to cry when I said

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Winning Letter

      May 10, 2024

      Recently we visited a place of safety. At security, everyone must sign in. The stone building looks like an ordinary residence with large lawns and a nice playground. A group of laughing children catch my eye. One little one introduces himself. The l

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dear Frankie

      Jun 6, 2021

      Dear Frankie
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      My Country Childhood

      Dec 30, 2019

      DR JESSICA WHITE is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. The 41-year-old is a fiction and non-fiction writer. Jessica grew up on a 2500-hectare mixed farming property near Boggabri in north-west NSW where she lived w

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Winning Letter

      Sep 2, 2022

      In my spare time I am a pianist and I was invited one evening to play for the renowned Karkloof Spa, out in the bush close to Howick. I play a medley of popular older songs, including what are often called “songs from the shows”. In the course of my

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How Dementia Saved Mum & Me

      Mar 31, 2021

      How Dementia Saved Mum & Me
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Your Page

      Aug 16, 2023

      It takes a great deal of courage to uproot one’s city life and start over in the country. For those courageous families in the July story Moving to the Country who’ve taken the plunge and made a new life for themselves, they’ve done so by moving thei

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      All about MY FATHER

      May 13, 2019

      All about MY FATHER
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Your Page

      Aug 16, 2023

      It takes a great deal of courage to uproot one’s city life and start over in the country. For those courageous families in the July story Moving to the Country who’ve taken the plunge and made a new life for themselves, they’ve done so by moving thei

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Blood Oranges

      Jul 24, 2019

      Blood Oranges
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Caribbean King

      Jan 12, 2022

      Anything you can’t leave home without? I have to decide where home is. Sometimes I leave the so-called home without certain things and I have either to replace them or do without. I have a conscious philosophy – what’s happened in front of me I canno

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Doug’s DIARY

      Mar 17, 2023

      How come February is the shortest month, but somehow feels like the longest? Thankfully, it’s punctuated by Pippin’s birthday, which provides a ray of intense sunshine in what is otherwise, so often, a dark time for me. There have been some high poin

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ‘My Grandfather’s Allotment Was A PLACE OF MAGIC’

      Jan 5, 2023

      I treasure this photograph of me with my grandfather: it brings back my very first memories of being in nature, engulfed by things that grow. It was taken in 1950 – I was around a year old, and we were on his allotment, down by the river in Ilkley in

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Colin Murray

      Aug 15, 2022

      Colin Murray
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Character Studies

      May 18, 2021

      Character Studies
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      I Ran Away From Home At 60!

      Feb 20, 2024

      Three decades ago, I celebrated my 30th birthday in the time-honoured tradition of all young people who think they are an adult but have no real idea about life, duty or personal responsibility – I got smashed. In fairness, I had quite a lot to get s

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2024

      Because today, the leaves of the black walnut tree flicker a new season’s chartreuse,Because the pelts of both my cats gleam with the sheen of cherishment,Because Halloween-cobweb clouds in the blue blue blue blue blue,Because today, the only thing t

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dear Frankie

      Aug 1, 2021

      Dear Frankie
      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Letterbox

      Apr 1, 2020

      Dear Everybuggy, My nonna recently found my mom’s old Cricket magazines. I was reading them one day when a story from the October 1976 issue caught my eye. “Minnie Maloney and Macaroni” is about a family who buys seven boxes of macaroni every day for

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Lost Cause

      Dec 6, 2020

      A Lost Cause
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Diamonds

      Jun 4, 2018

      Diamonds
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Join The Weekly CONVERSATION

      Feb 19, 2023

      Recently, I read Kerre Woodham’s excellent article on positivity. I daresay if I was to know Kerre and her mum, they would be on my “best buddies” list. One’s mindset can be one’s best friend or one’s worst enemy at my stage of life at 68 years. Thos

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Welsh elegy

      Dec 10, 2024

      A Welsh elegy
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Home ALONE

      Jul 17, 2024

      You join me at the breakfast table, where I am eating Coco Pops and I don’t care who knows it. This is a rare treat at Dear Towers because in the normal course of events, I cannot eat Coco Pops without a constant flow of rude remarks from Mr Dear. ‘W

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Alan Cumming

      Nov 1, 2021

      Alan Cumming
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Glimpses

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Glimpses - Pat Fowle

      9781803138435.jpg

      Copyright © 2021 Pat Fowle

      The moral right of the author has been asserted.

      Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

      Matador

      9 Priory Business Park,

      Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

      Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

      Tel: 0116 279 2299

      Email: [email protected]

      Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

      Twitter: @matadorbooks

      ISBN 9781803138435

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

      This book is for my nine grandchildren.

      Contents

      Glimpses

      Cupid’s Dart

      The Wedding

      The Group

      Eve’s Incense

      Scotland

      Oil Rig

      Avebury

      Planets

      The Chimney

      Etna

      Capri

      A Letter From my Father-in-law

      Sister Anne

      Israel

      No Brake Fluid!

      The Electrician

      Las Vegas

      Durango

      Back Problem

      Wishing Away Time!

      Parting Gift

      Dot of Light

      Padre Pio

      St Teresa of Ávila

      Faith

      Dream

      The Dress

      Sikh Shrine

      Guardian Angels

      Summing Up

      Glimpses

      This is a glimpse into what I consider to be noteworthy memories. Most of one’s life is not always memorable. I spent a fair amount of my past just chasing the wind, however, I can recall certain events, some of which I will relate to you. I’ll stick to glimpses, since I do not intend for these recollections of my life to read like a diary.

      I will start at the very beginning and recount briefly, my earliest memory. I was sitting outside my house in a pram, aggressively objecting to anyone who passed too near. In contrast, I remember looking down at our cat lying close to the pram and feeling affection towards it. Not an exciting first account, but there it is, first memory! I have fleeting memories of my infant school in Cambridge, which I recall as being on the whole enjoyable. The second strong memory is of my maternal great-grandmother, known to the family as ‘Little Granny’. She was very old. My grandmother told me she was one hundred years old. Apparently, she had never been ill and had never had to see a doctor. One fact remained clear to me – she loved humbugs. Round-shaped sweets with stripes running through like rock! Popular in those days. One very cold and frosty day, Little Granny decided to make a trip to the nearby corner shop. She had run out of humbugs and the corner shop she knew supplied them.

      The pavements on that day were dangerously icy but unperturbed. Little Granny set off for the short distance to get her one indulgence: humbugs. With the icy conditions making walking on foot treacherous, she soon slipped and fell, breaking her arm in the process. An ambulance was called and the last we ever saw of Little Granny was (and this is what I clearly remember) of her smiling and waving cheerfully with the good arm. It was seeing her seated alone inside the dark, old-fashioned ambulance, smiling so bravely as the doors closed and she was driven away, that affected me deeply. I’m trying to remember what I felt at the time; affection, yes; compassion, I don’t know. I didn’t think then that she shouldn’t have gone unaccompanied to the hospital – I was four years old! I do now. Little Granny died a few days later of pneumonia. No antibiotics then. I recall now that my grandmother always found it difficult and sad to say goodbye. I remember her chin used to wobble without fail when saying goodbye to anyone and everyone.

      I don’t remember that I spent a great deal of time at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, when I was a baby. Glandular problems, possibly due to unpasteurised milk. I also had a long stay once again at four or possibly just five. I was put into the children’s ward with scarlet fever and, due to it being the contagious ward, it followed on with measles and a few other unwelcome diseases. I do remember some of my time there as being happy, thanks to the wonderful nurses and doctors, especially on Christmas day when Father Christmas arrived on the ward and gave everyone a present. Because it was a contagious ward, no one was allowed to have toys to take home and my teddy bear was removed and, I was told, destroyed. One of my less happy memories.

      In 1940 I went to London with my mother and her lover, to live. I was just four when the second world war broke out, experiencing what all children at that time did: rationing, air raids, nearby shelters to run to. I recall a bombing from time to time and yet my childhood was for most of the time, happy! I should mention now that due to my father’s kind heart, my whole life was changed forever. It was during a short leave from the army that my father met, on a train from London to Cambridge, a lonely young man. He invited him to stay at our home for the weekend. Poor fellow, my father had said to my mother. Make him feel at home. Those were the parting words from my foolish father, as he left to return to camp. Well! My mother did. She was very young, twenty-three and very attractive, and the tall, dark, handsome man was charming. They started an affair and soon fled to London, taking me with them. I was then five and it was 1940. Some months after, my father was given compassionate leave to find me, which he did effortlessly. Thanks to my grandmother, who had the address, he swiftly deposited me at my maternal grandmother’s small house and there, thank God, I remained for the rest of my school days. My father was an unassuming sort of man, ill-equipped for this world, but I hero-worshipped him.

      The next vivid memory which has stayed with me was on my seventh birthday. I remember standing close to a vegetable patch in my aunt’s garden. I remember smiling with great concentration at the box camera my aunt was holding – click, as the mechanism went into action. I clicked into a sudden awareness at the very same moment. I am seven and I am in this world. The realisation of this thought flooded over me for the first time in my life. There was something else I felt and almost knew in that instant. I hovered on the threshold of a stillness, waiting. I held my breath in an effort not to think or breathe. The strange feeling passed almost in the same second. I smiled now at my aunt and not the camera. I asked if I could keep the photograph to put in my album. I didn’t in fact have an album at the time, but my aunt nodded anyway. Aunt Gladys was my mother’s sister and was an extremely organised person with a good, solid character. She made most of my clothes as well as for her two daughters. The youngest of whom I had, and still have, a great affection for. What I most admired about my aunt was her ability to knit and read at the same time. As for my grandmother, she was a busy, industrious woman who struggled cheerfully to make ends meet. I know that she was fond of me. It was just that she didn’t have the enthusiasm, or perhaps the energy, to show it. One didn’t show much outward sign of affection in those days!

      She was small and moved quickly like a nervous bird. Her nose was slightly hooked. She had small, dark eyes that were set quite deeply in her tiny, wrinkled face, brown from hours

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1