Saturday 19 March 2016

Nearly Easter.

20.3.16

Dear Evie,

You are nearly three months old now and later this week, at Easter, I will see you for the second time.  I cant wait!  I was so lucky to be able to get to Devon to see you on the day you were born.  I'm fifty years old and I thought that falling head over heels in love with a younger woman was unlikely to say the least.  But it happened with you :)  When your dad was born I felt something similar, and again when your uncle Cei came along.  But you were different.

I think, maybe, that when it is ones own children you are so focussed on their immediate needs and nurturing that you can't see the Big Picture.  When a grandchild comes along t becomes clearer.  You showed me just what it means to be human, you were my link to a future I will never see.  And that's pretty bloody beautiful.

Anyway, I decided there and then that  I would actually get around to doing something which I have tried to do many times before, to keep a personal journal.  This is it.

I won't promise to write to you every day, but I will do it as often as I can.  I will promise to be honest, so I think I will be writing to the grown-up Evie, not the wriggling cute little poop machine your parents are currently looking after :)  So, if you come across this before you are grown up, then try to bear that in mind, eh?

So...just in case I am Gone or have just changed a whole lot while you are growing up (hey, these things happen!) here's a little bit about who I am.

I was born in Northampton in 1965 to Dave and Pat Evans.  I have a younger brother (Uncle Owen) and a sister (Aunty Helen) who is the youngest of the three of us.  My mum died of cancer when I was 20, my dad is still kicking around as I write this and I hope will be for a long while yet.  He is a real character and is almost as frustrated at being so far away from you as I am.

I grew up in a world that, I think, would be almost unrecognisable to you.  No internet or email, no mobile phones or credit/debit cards, only four TV channels.  I can even remember us getting our first land line telephone (do they still have those when you read this?)  I can certainly remember us not having a car, and nor did most of my mates' parents.  I remember our house before central heating was installed and how suspicious everyone was of microwaves.  I watched the first moon landings and like everyone else my age wanted to be an astronaut.  For a week, then I wanted to be a marine biologist like Jacques Cousteau (look him up...)

When I left school (and the less said about that the better...I was a rubbish pupil) I got into nursing and eventually  became a psychiatric nurse.  I did that, in Oxford, Northampton, Brighton, Mansfield and then Oxford again, until I was thirty six.  Then I got Multiple Sclerosis (which I hope will be a thing you have to look up in history books!) and the N.H.S (which I hope is still going) retired me.  After that, things got interesting and I am currently getting to do what I wanted to do in the first place :)

One of my earliest memories is of drawing.  I was about three and I was told off for drawing in the margins of a childrens encyclopaedia.  I remember that there weren't enough pictures :)  Since then I have never stopped drawing for very long.  I wanted to go to art college after school but a numbskull careers teacher told me there was "no call" for artists and I was fool enough to believe him.  Never believe teachers who tell you not to follow your dreams, Evie!!

Anyway, after I retired we moved to Shropshire and I got to do what I always wanted to do and take a degree in Illustration at the University in Wrexham which was N.E.W.I when I was there and became Glyndwr University shortly afterwards.  Since I graduated in 2008 I have been working as a freelance illustrator and community artist.  Another time I will post some pictures of some of the wonderful projects I've been involved in.

I've been living in Shrewsbury since 2010 and for the last year or so I have been a Director of a Community Interest Company (which when you get to know me you will understand is hilarious, me a Director of a company...) which is really just a bunch of artists who have taken over a derelict supermarket.  I have a wonderful studio space there (although we cant afford the heating so it's bloody freezing!) and I am, disability notwithstanding, getting quite a lot of work done.

I have just noticed it is now 1am and, as I am not as young and active as I was, I need to go to bed.  So, goodnight Evie.  I promise I will write to you soon!

Phill

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