What Started This?

A while ago, I started a series of essays to my great, great grandchildren. Its intent was to tell them about my life in the latter half of the 20th century and as much as I get to see of the 21st. This is because I think I and my contemporaries have lived fortunate lives, seeing monumental changes in people, behaviour, societies and the world in general - coming out largely unscathed from all of this turbulence.

When I say 'my life' I suppose I really mean the world that I have seen as opposed to what I've been up to personally. Like, life in Basildon as a child in the mid-50s when it really was a New Town of just a few hundred houses, lots of fields, country roads, derelict, deserted bungalows a quarter of a mile apart, with attendant abandoned orchards between neighbours and unsecured building sites on which we played in the evenings once the builders had gone.

Then, those teenage years when the Beatles opened the UK pop scene. This is a bit disrespectful to Cliff, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Joe Brown etc., who were all famous and revered, but they were just copying American pop culture which dominated the UK pop scene till the early 60s. The Beatles made it alright to be original, although, to be fair, a lot of their early works were just covers. More on all of that later.

Also included will be world events like man walking on the Moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Eastern European dictators, then, jumping out of chronological order, the more recent but similar activity in North Africa, MPs' Expenses, newspapers hacking phones and e-mails and going back to chronology, development of the PC, the Twin Towers, the proliferation of the World Wide Web, e-mails, the Internet, digital cameras, mobile phones, the popularity of Facebook, Twitter and so forth.

The intended audience will live in roughly 100 years time, so I am trying this out in a blog first. Let's see what transpires.

I would hope that my blog will be grammatically correct and spelling errors will be limited to typos precipitated by speed, something I abhor but fall prey to as much as any other person in a rush to get an idea out to see what it looks like.

Also, things happen to me, as I'm sure they do to you. But I don't believe in coincidence. For me there's a purpose to everything so I wonder what it is. Of course, I may be wrong on this but what does that matter? I see no merit in being right. When that happens, that's just a piece of Good Luck. I do understand though, there are some people for whom being right is important - I'm just not one of them. So if you find something with which you disagree in this blog, feel free to mention it. Just don't expect me to offer an apology or correct it. Being wrong is of little consequence in my world. I have been wrong so many times in my life, I am now pretty good at it.

So now you have an idea of what this blog will cover. It is principally a first airing of "Letters To My Grandchildren's Grandchildren". The topics covered will go well beyond what is listed above. Life overflows continually, offering tasty morsels in limitless supply, and some can't be ignored so there's no telling where it will go.