Brother Stuart comments upon receiving a copy of The Time Horse:
Neil
Thank you for this
magnificent memoir, brilliantly conceived and beautifully translated into a
lasting family biography. It is a production immediately for the coffee table
for sure, to catch the eye for frequent perusal, and more, for the book
shelves, and for the attics eventually as a lasting illustration of who we are.
This pleasantly
tactile volume contains not only the broader brushstrokes of life for each of
us, suggested not only in the wider choice of subjects to illustrate the
passage of time and the gist of life. It also holds tantalising clues, the
telling minutiae, the fond trivialities, beguiling trifles of recollection that
glint and dazzle. These are revealing pigments and shades in a mosaic of
memories few others have an opportunity to share.
Just how little we
know truly of the lives of our parents or grandparents, and others of their
generation, is suggested by the comparatively revealing nature of this
production, evidence of how much we are willing to confide of our own times.
Yet, in turning our minds to this recollection for our own time-capsule, we
redress at least some of the balance for them: this is a joint memorial of
inestimable worth beyond our own day, reaching greatly back into theirs.
It is also a
fluent illustration of daily life in artless snapshots, those moments that tell
others so much through expressions, attentive or wayward, and in background
whether chosen for scenic beauty or just unregarded clutter. All of it is of
its moment, the fashions, the furniture, the vehicles, the lighting,
informative even in the enigmatic perhaps, sometimes the absence of someone or
of some thing. Yet there are too statements of the abstract that frame
personalities beyond physical impressions, of credos, religion, faith and
philosophy, and clues to education, formal and inspired. It reaches beyond
linguistic constraints in languages too, in the many alternative words of the
inner soul, a pulse of encouragement for others.
This is also a
simple thing of beauty, too, a photo album bound together with summaries,
rubrics and inscriptions beyond cryptic captions. In short, a triumph.
Naturally, you will
fret over imperfections in this, the first edition. In some of this you have
had to experiment, and often blindly, and to persevere against the contrary,
and to guess and to hope and suffer frustration. You can be sure we all know
this and thank you for your patience and unremitting determination. Your
generosity is unbounding.
I received my
first copy from you today and it is with pride and pleasure I bother its pages
with happy regard, not least for the tiny things we will all see with joy: my
own forgotten mention of my cat Ruaridh leapt out to me in a distinct frisson
of surprise: “Let’s go wee Ruri, More like a dug than a dug can be, Up the
river and over the lea, That's the way for Ruri and me.”
This is the stuff
of memories like no other.
Stuart
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