Page 11 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

~ Foreword ~

Most people have lives of some, or great, interest, though it is often not realised
that that is the case until a large portion of it has passed by and ‘thoughts recollected
in tranquillity’ foster the realisation that one’s life is only a brief moment of time
that all too easily slips into the abyss of forgotten history. Such was the case with
my recollection of my parents’ history, for they grew up during one of the most
cataclysmic of times, both being born in 1913 and being in the ‘prime of their lives’
during the World War II, near the end of which I was born (and about which I have
often wondered when they knew, or whether it occurred to them, that the Allies
were definitely to prevail and that the time had come to pass on their genes).

During that war, the family home was in the general area of Woolwich and Foots
Cray, prime areas for bombing during the prolonged Blitz; they were boroughs
adjacent to the London Royal Docks, munitions factories, and the River Thames, by
whose reflection bombers could see their way to the prime targets of Westminster,
St. Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. My father’s sight was poor, and for that
reason he was enlisted as a fireman, and my mother became an ambulance driver.
Twice their home was destroyed by bombs, once our collective lives being saved by
a Morrison Shelter, a steel construction that served both as a shelter in case of the
collapse of one’s house and as a dining table.

These things I know because of the incident of my being bundled under the
table and the side ‘cages’ being lowered just in time as my father heard the V1
coming and knew that it was for us. This was the stuff of frequently-recited family
legend … but very little else was. When she died in 2005, my mother was starting
to write some recollections of a life that started ten years after the Wright Brothers
first flew and ended two years after the Concorde was to fly for the last time.
Nothing else was saved from two long lives; a few photographs survived, occasional
memories periodically surface, and no letters remain, despite what I venture to say
are thousands written.

With time and great good fortune having provided to us five vigorous grand-
children, I was brought to task one day when my daughter-in-law found my personal
tale sorely lacking in specificity, what I had done when and where being almost
entirely unrecorded. Fortunately, this was not quite the case, having gone away to
sea when eighteen years old and at that time being given a five-year diary by a kindly
family friend. I was far from diligent in keeping this up, there being gaps, sometimes

10