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When we moved back to England, I was nine and a half. We had lived in New Jersey for three years.
When my mother told me, I thought of going home as a good thing. It would erase the strangeness that
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Dear Peter
Hi. How are you? I mean, well, presumably, what with that spider DNA and everything. I hope your aunt had a happy birthday. Considering she’s been frozen in time for 45 years as a pink-cheeked old lady, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess she’s ok too.
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In Part I of this story, the author’s mother – in her fifties – finds out she was adopted. Then, while investigating parish records in the village where her biological family lived, she’s recognised by a relative. She is told that she has a brother, who does not know she exists.
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One of the strangest things about life is the way that it rewrites itself. One moment, there you are, with the facts of your existence spread out in front of you, tidy and accessible, like a picnic on a blanket.
Perhaps you look away. And when you look back, everything is different. Rearranged by a glittering train of ants.
It’s a little Alice-In-Wonderland. It’s a little unnerving. It seems to happen all the time. Here’s an example.
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Were you ever in a band? Wait, I should rephrase that. Were you ever in a fake band? Do kids still do that or was it just something we did in the 1980s before the existence of Bratz and internet porn?
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I’m sure everyone has heard the proposition of the corporation as psychopath. It goes something like this. If a corporation was a person, the forms of behaviour they display would mark them out as a psychopath.
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I said to my brother, “I’ve just been reading a book on Evelyn Waugh.”
He said, “Evil in war? That sounds like a hardcore book.”
