My dad, the author Robert Page

You probably haven't heard of my dad yet, but he's an author.

This is the two of us after a day out at Rufford Abbey in north Notts.

Although he has been writing for as long as I can remember and has written three novels, with a fourth on the way, it took 25 years of never giving up for O-Books to accept one of his books. He will be 75 when it becomes available on the bookshelves but what a testimony to tenacity.

Dad used to promise us a big house in the best area in Nottingham, once he sold his book. I don't think we ever took him seriously, not because we knew anything about the dreams of a drunk back then, but because he was always telling stories.

We got the one about the first Christmas pudding; haggises running around scottish hills, one set of legs longer than the other so they didn't fall off the mountain side; the story of macaroni and other wild, outlandish tales to keep fidgetty children firmly stuck to dining chairs until the grown ups had finished eating.

It was dad who taught me how to play chess and we'd shut ourselves in another room for hours. Or we played word dice games. He never let me win and thank goodness for that. It made me work hard and built a fighting, competetive spirit.

He was as high as a mountain and wide as the sky, my dad. We both loved those weekend and school holiday epic walks with Rebel, our black labrador cross. Oh, we'd put the world to rights, the two of us. We'd paint fairy tales across the sky with those dreams of a world full of justice and rightness. We were what Mum would call 'as thick as thieves'.

It was as we got older that the darkness set in and the evil shadow of his alcoholism strangled the light from his eyes and rational thought from his mind. I grew used to lying in bed, rigid with fear, listening to his drunken rants, afraid he'd come upstairs and murder us in our beds.

My high as a mountain and wide as the sky dad shriveled to less than a dirty molehill.

Mum packed his bag and kicked him out when I was 15. I came home from a theatre visit and the house was quiet. He'd gone and with him went the dark, black shadow of his illness. For us, mum, my sister and two brothers at least.

For Dad, it began his climb to wholeness and health, sobriety and sanity. It was to be a long journey but he never gave up. And he's still growing: back to that high as a mountain and wide as the sky dad. I think he may even have the odd haggis running around at his feet somewhere.

This is the link to author Robert Page's book.

http://www.o-books.com/product_info.php?products_id=660

his blogspot is

http://bobp-fromtheheart.blogspot.com/

Healthtalkonline

Healthtalkonline began in 1999 and began to gather people from across the country to talk about their personal experiences of various health issues and their effects on individuals.
Subjects that affect all of us in some way are covered, such as cancer, dying, mental health, pregnancy and childcare and living with disability are discussed in face to face interviews with real people telling real stories. Their own stories. This website is unique inasmuch as it acts as a tool and reference point for healthcare professionals, educators and the public alike.
I was interviewed in July 2007. I volunteered after seeing a link on the National Autistic Society website and was contacted by Dr Sara Ryan, pictured above right, from Oxford University. We met at an hotel in Derby for the video interview, which can now be seen at http://www.healthtalkonline.org/disability/LifeontheAutismspectrumAdults/People/Interview/1608/Category/172. We talked at length about my life experiences as someone with Asperger’s syndrome.
At the time of my interview, I was suffering from what turned out to be a prolonged period of depression, a subject also covered on the Healthtalkonline website.
The renamed and reshaped website was launched on October 13th, 2008 at Altitude 360, Milbank Tower in London and I was invited. By Lord Stone of Blackheath, it appeared. Altitude 360 is a reception room at the very top of Milbank Tower, which was built in 1963. It was here that, on December 19th, 2008, just two months later, Lord Mayor Boris Johnson announced the New Bus for London.
It was a strange experience to turn up for our ‘Writing the News’ module that morning with my wheely suitcase, knowing I would, several hours later, be at a unique reception attended by author Philip Pullman, Ann Keene MP and Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health Services, face of Channel 4 News, Jon Snow and others. I would be making the news.
Perhaps if a resource like Healthtalkonline had been around back in the early 1970’s, when I was 9 and referred for the first time for psychiatric help, it would have helped those caring for me, including, and especially, my parents, teachers and wider family. Perhaps they would have been more understanding. Perhaps I would have been treated more kindly. Perhaps there would have been no need for the three years spent on highly addictive drugs that were only ever intended for short term use and are now never given to young children. Perhaps I would have been treated more kindly by the women on my mother’s side of the family, who ridiculed my lack of femininity and mocked my tomboy, outdoor lifestyle. Perhaps, too, I would not have been driven to live in a fantasy world where my best friends were Kid Curry and Hannibal Heyes, from the popular TV series, Alias Smith and Jones. My bike would have been just that and not the ‘horse’ I rode for miles on my own, with my ‘dog’ at my side. It would have helped to avoid the black rages that filled my head in response to yet another misunderstanding. Perhaps I would not have suffered twice from Anorexia nervosa, prolonged bulimia nervosa and three failed marriages.
The launch party was a personal triumph. Negotiating the London underground and locating Milbank Tower was a victory of fear over need to be there. A melding of journalist with autist. I felt very small and frightened, knowing, as usual, I would be the visiting alien. Would there be anyone else there ‘on the spectrum’?
It was the second time I had met Sara who, thankfully, recognised me. She was with two other women who did not look at all autistic. My facial recognition may be patchy but I always recognise my own and these two women were on the website because they had autistic family members. Sara introduced me to Mark, who was also interviewed for the website. He was 27 and had Asperger’s. At the end of the evening, we walked back to the tube station together. ‘At least,’ he said, ‘I didn’t get laid.’
I looked him up on the website when I got back home and found he was rather prone to one night stands because he was so bad at forming relationships he foresaw himself as staying single.
I had my very recently bought contacts book and got so many numbers, email addresses and contacts, my head spun whizzier than a psychedelic spider’s web. Philip Pullman gave me his number and signed ‘The Subtle Knife’ for my son. Jon Snow was incredibly kind adding his email address and work number. Lord Stone gave me his card and a very English ‘peck on the cheek’. I got so many business cards my Filofax looked like the seven ‘thin and ugly cows’ swallowed up by the seven fat ones in Pharoah’s dream (NCV 1993). Still skinny, but something to remember in the morning. So, too, did Jon Snow’s tie, which I won in the fundraising auction. It cost me the equivalent of one month’s mortgage but memories are priceless.
Healthtalkonline is priceless, too. Not just for the people taking part but for families, friends and the miscellaneous menagerie of professionals who need educating.
Dr Jonathan Miller spoke at the launch. As a medical student at University College, London, in the 1950’s, he noticed that doctors had little time to spend at the bedside of patients, whereas nurses did. He spoke of the Monty Python sketch and ‘the machine that goes ping’. The medical profession were, at the time, more interested in the mechanics that made people well but were out of touch with the people, the humanity, behind the suffering. In his eyes, Healthtalkonline was the avenue by which those affected by illness could voice their feelings. Until these people are consulted, considered and cared for, the machine will continue to ping louder than human suffering.
Healthtalkonline.org is a meisterstueck , a brilliantly obvious platform for the little voice to shout.
And I was part of it.
http://www.healthtalkonline.org/Home
http://www.youthhealthtalk.org/
http://www.nas.org.uk/
http://www.entertainment-press.biz/albums.php?albumId=74025
Genesis 41:20-21 NCV
http://roycecarlton.com/admin/speakers/fileuploads/Miller_Info-Kit.pdf

Meeting Kevin

I met Kevin ‘the boss’ in a taxi this morning, when he took me to the train station. He used to co-own Premier Taxis in Sandiacre, Derbyshire, with Tony Roe and I went to work for them as a weekend night driver between 1994 and 1998.
In just over five minutes, he filled me in with his life to date and I remembered how much can be found out about someone in such a short space of time and the importance of making an instant connection with the customer. Journalists can learn a lot from taxi drivers, in the context of a news story and getting information from someone you may only meet for a very short time is a useful skill.
Kevin told me he heard the world from his car and my former experience as a taxi driver would agree. He got, he said, the credit crunch stories from people who lost their jobs, the bosses forced to lay off staff and those struggling with falling interest rates.
After selling his share in Premier Taxis, Kevin became the manager at a Derby bus company but began to disagree with some of their practices and so turned full circle. Going back into taxis as a driver rather than the boss, he could ‘leave the stress behind’ and go to work, do his job and go home.
Erewash Borough Council, the area Kev drives in, requires a taxi driver to have an almost clean driving licence, full CRB check, a medical and a ‘knowledge’ test to check how well they know the area. There are unwritten skills which, in other professions, would need a university degree or diploma at least. Some passengers like to talk. It could be current affairs, sport, or acting as counsellor in domestic fallouts or personal hurts; listening to someone’s worries at the loss of their job; talking sport. Sometimes getting fed pizza, chips or offered fags. On occasions, the driver could be somebody’s last hope of ‘pulling’ that night. Oh, for a fiver for every non enticing invitation to call back at the end of the shift. In my four years as a night driver, I also saw the world, as Kevin has. Taxi drivers can be best mate or invisible. Every kind of possible domestic relationship is played out in the back of a car. Tears, tantrums and tender moment, even physical fights.
We take for granted the jobs people do but, having been in taxis as both driver and passenger, there is a story in everyone. Talk to the driver, the hairdresser, barber, shop assistant. Everyone has a story to tell. Does anyone, I wonder, ask the driver what theirs is?
As with a writer putting in that last full stop and pressing ‘send’, tonight Kevin ‘the boss’ will turn off the engine, get out of his car and go home. Job done.

The Story of Caspian’s Cross

I can see you looking at this cross around my neck. ‘Where did it come from?’ you ask and, ‘what is its tale?’
Sit with me, child, and I will tell you the story of Caspian’s cross.
It was a very long time ago and Caspian and Elizabeth were not long wed. He was a sailor and soon off to sea on King Henry’s new ship. It was named after his only sister, Mary Rose, to whom he was very close. There was much pageantry at the launch of the ship, with King Henry and his entourage of courtiers, musicians and players lined up at the dockyard, waiting for the Mary Rose to set sail. How grand they all looked in their bright coloured finery. How great, too, were the celebrations as the King loved so much the pomp of such occasions.
The young wife clung to her husband as they parted. Taking the cross, given to many of the sailors as a good luck talisman, from around his neck, Caspian pressed it into his wife’s hand. ‘Goodbye, my sweet life,’ he said, as he kissed her tear-wet cheeks, ‘I shall return and we will be together again soon.’
A huge fanfare erupted as the Mary Rose set sail, with many people lined up along the harbour, cheering and waving bright ribbons. The King looked on in pride. The jovial air soon turned to gasps of horror and screams of fear as the Mary Rose broke apart. Although it sank quickly, it gave enough time for the screams of the drowning sailors to reach the harbour wall where Elizabeth stood. The many other hundreds of people who had, only moments earlier, been shouting and cheering with excitement at the wonderful sight wailed with grief as the Mary Rose was pulled under the water.
Caspian, along with many hundreds of fine sailors drowned that day.
A few months later, Elizabeth’s grief was softened by the birth of her son. She called him Caspian, which had been his father’s name. Although she wept much for her husband whose eyes the boy had inherited, she warmed to the new life she had given birth to. Upon reaching his adulthood, Caspian’s mother, placed the cross given to her by her husband on the day of his death around her son’s neck and with it she gave her blessing.
Caspian grew from sturdy and adventurous boy into a strong young man and a successful merchant. He travelled through many foreign lands, bringing rare spices and fine cloth back to these shores, blessing his mother with many comforts as she grew older. He fell in love with Marianna, the daughter of an alderman in a Prussian city, and made her his wife. They had four strong and handsome sons and six daughters, all fair of face and beautiful. Their eldest son, to hold with the family tradition, was also called Caspian, like his father and his father’s father, the cross was passed to him upon reaching adulthood.
Following in the way of his father, young Caspian became a wealthy and successful merchant who loved both God and his fellow man.
When he was six and twenty, young Caspian wed Catherine, his childhood sweetheart. They were very happy, made more so by the forthcoming birth of their first child. Maybe she would have been strong enough to safely deliver their daughter but it was a long, hard, labour and shortly after the baby came into the world, bore another child, a son. She had been carrying twins and the loss of blood proved too much for her frail frame. Young Caspian stayed by his wife’s side through the night but, as the spring sun washed away the early mist, Catherine died.
Filled with grief at the loss of his young wife, Caspian gave up his life as a merchant and joined a band of travelling players. His twin children, whom he had named Caspian, to hold with the family tradition, and Gisele, who was as beautiful as the mother she had never known.
The two children lacked not for want of a mother’s love as the players proved to be all the family they could have wished for. They grew strong and full of mischief, learning many foreign tongues as the band of players moved from one country to the next. It was a happy time. Young Caspian became known as Caspian the elder and his son Caspian the twin. Father taught son to make marionettes for the shows they put on and the women taught his daughter to tell the stories that went with them. For many years, the family of players travelled, relaying news of wars, plagues and rumours of unrest at the folly of King Charles I, whose Catholic wife held much sway in the English court.
One very cold night in winter, the travelling players took shelter in a barn belonging to a rich Lord whose patronage was well known. As the blizzard worsened, they dared to light a fire. The wood was dry and the barn very old. Suddenly, the door blew open and a swathe of sparks flew upwards, into the air and caught on the roof, setting it alight. Many of the players perished but Caspian the elder saved the lives of many more, returning again and again to pull women and children from the blaze, including his own. The roof collapsed and Caspian the elder was crushed. His body was pulled from the wrecked building the next morning. The cross that had passed through three generations was given to Caspian the twin.
He and his sister, Gisele, travelled on, mourning the loss of their father and the friends who died in the fire. They took the plays from country to country, as ever, arriving back on these shores in the midst of Civil War, where their news was gratefully and fearfully received in every town they reached.
‘But how came you by Caspian’s cross, mother?’ you ask.
Child, you have not seen six summers yet well you question me. I am Gisele and Caspian was my twin brother, my father, grandfather and great grandfather alike. Fever ravaged our band of players. Caspian fell sick with it and died. I was his only family and his cross came to me. I am all the daughters of my father’s house, and all the brothers, too. When you are grown into a man, the cross will be yours as you also bear the name Caspian, to hold with the family tradition.