Linda and I Life begins at 40? (ePub)

After retiring from a lifetime of work and finding myself with more time on my older hands I decided, at the request of my ever-inquisitive daughter Tracy, to put pen to paper to answer more and more of her inquisitive questions about why at the tender age of seven she'd found herself without a mother to comfort and guide her throughout her forthcoming years. Which of course, if I could document the years prior to and after the time that was to change the course of our normal family life after I'd put down in black and white, it would save me from having to answer her same questions over and over again.

Obviously nobody knows what waits for them around their next corner. Nor do they know what the effects of an unfortunate set of unforeseen circumstances might have on them that they hadn't seen coming their way.

Some might turn to alcohol or religion for the first time to help them cope with what life might had so unfortunately thrown into their path along the way, and I wouldn't have been the one to blame them if they did.

But having loved the sound of laughter all my life, I found turning to humour to take the edge off any unforeseen difficult situation that had come my way had been the best medicine that any doctor could have prescribed for me. Especially at that particular time in my younger life between the late 1960's and late 1980's which will be the only decades that I shall be recalling. Not that I'd been laughing my older head off every time I'd put pen to paper you understand. Far from it most of the time. But I didn't want to turn my recollections into a long collection of short 'sob stories' as they say.

Life should be enjoyed and not endured, as they also say, no matter what comes your way. So I hope dear reader, you'll enjoy the humorous side of this sometimes coarse and frankly-written true account of my younger life when a happy family of four eventually became three without having to endure it in the same way that I'd had to sometimes do when reliving every single aspect of it and writing about it every single day on and off for the past ten years. Which of course, after having been given no choice in the matter, would have been no laughing matter for any family man to have to have gone through at any 'god given' time of their younger lives.

So if you're prepared to join me on a ride along a long and bumpy road that deals with the effects of miscarriages and eventual births. A long hip-jarring road that deals with the effects of congenital hip dysplasia. A long heart-wrenching road that deals with the effects of losing a loved one. Then waste no time in getting your ticket and getting yourself prepared for a long and true journey through my difficult earlier life that I hope should see you either shedding a few tears of laughter or shedding a few tears of sorrow by the time you eventually reach the end of it.