Loving Monsters Read Online Free PDF

a glass of sherry.
    – At the time when my father and Olive met in the Admiralty, though, she was still allegedly good fun and quite bouncy. She was also fearsomely bright. I later heard this from a couple of people who had known her in the Censorship and they said my mother had the best brain of anyone they had ever met, male or female. That must mean something. In those days women weren’t as a rule given the credit for having the intelligence to come in out of the rain, not unless a gallant gentleman with an umbrella assisted them. So what happened to her in those ten years or so after the war? I really don’t know. I’m afraid she went considerably batty. Marriage to my father, I suppose. Plus her health was not up to much. But she went on being bright in a strictly formal sense even as Jesus rotted away the rest of her intellect. I remember she carried all our household accounts in her head. I never once saw her use pencil and paper to add up bills. She also whizzed through the crossword in my father’s Daily Telegraph. Anyway, let’s not dwell on my mother. She really had nothing to do with my life other than in a limited biological sense. –
    At these words (Exhibit B) the biographer sits back and taps his teeth with the end of his pen, sensing that it will be useless to challenge head-on a statement that cannot possibly be true. The tone of voice in which it is delivered, one of throwaway finality, suggests clearly that any further probing will be met with truculence.To catch this monkey one will need to go very softly indeed, behind Jayjay’s back if necessary. Since when was it assumed that anyone wanting their life written will necessarily tell the whole truth? Or even any of it?
    – One can hardly have grown up this century without having absorbed some of that Freudian over-determination – he said on another occasion. – You know, when things people don ’ t want to talk about take on heavy significance. But why mightn’t it be that the most important things in a person’s life sometimes really are the ones that seem the most significant? Now in my father’s case there was a side of him that I think did have a lasting effect on me, whereas I could never say that about my mother. Except, of course, that I’m a devout atheist and stupid with figures. I’ll get to my father’s influence shortly.

    – There’s no doubt that, seen through our neighbours’ eyes, my father would have appeared completely conventional, quite unexceptional. The Pooter par excellence, the nine-to-five man incarnate. Every morning, rain or shine, off to work in the City. Dark suit, bowler hat, overcoat, brolly and briefcase. A short walk to Well Hall: left into Balcaskie Road, down to Glenlea, left again and you’re practically at the station. Up to Charing Cross on the eight-seventeen. Strap-hang the District or Circle line to Monument, another short walk up Leadenhall Street. He worked in the new Lloyds building. New then, I mean; I think they built it on the site of the old East India House in the late twenties. Once there he must have been just one of a vast army of underwriters sitting at desks all day, probably in their shirtsleeves and wearing cuff protectors. Over the years he became quite senior, but essentially he remained an underwriter. Then in the evening the reverse journey back to Eltham. A picture of regularity. Much later, of course, that sort of working life became the butt of endless jokes about wage-slavery and unimaginative, drab existence. Still, I would bet that nowadays an awful lot of men would cheerfully put up with it if given the chance. People like routine, you know. They need it. At the end of a long life I am convinced that security is number three on the human list of basic essentials, right up there after food and shelter. That’s where politicians go so wrong talking about people needing to adjust to not having a job for life, to working with six-month or one-year contracts, to moving