Penelope

In my life I committed 8 crimes and had 13 blessings. That's what it says in this book. In fact, I had tens more blessings than that, and have only told you about the crimes I can remember, or care to confess to. It's the same for you. You won't have got everything right in your life either. Why do any of us write a memoir? Do we need to commit our life story to paper, to ensure that it doesn't entirely die when we do? Who would be interested, anyway? Does writing it down excuse us from the mistakes we made? Does it comfort us, that we acknowledge those blessings we had?I was a child of the 60s, and grew up in a family which may seem ordinary enough to you, but which was extraordinary to me. All these years later, I can still dwell upon the mystery of why my parents had us at all, my sisters and me. What they needed us for. But times were different then, and people seemed to spend less time agonising about what they should or shouldn't do. I miss them now, those aloof parents of ours, and our big house in Sussex and all the family parties. I even miss the silences between us.