Fragile Armour: Notes From The Crucible - Softcover

Pickering, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798300313975

Publisher: Independently published, 2024

Synopsis

Crucible:

- a container in which metals or other substances can be heated to very high temperatures.

- a situation in which something is tested or a conflict takes place, often one which produces something new.

- a severe trial or test.

Cauldron:

- a large, round container for cooking in, usually supported over a fire.

- something resembling a boiling cauldron in intensity or degree of agitation. Example – a cauldron of intense emotion.

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.” Josephine Hart, Damage.

Mine’s not an original or unique story, far from it. It wasn’t so bad for me, not compared to a lot of other people. In fact I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t die. I didn’t have to watch my father die over Zoom. I wasn’t excluded from a loved one’s funeral. I didn’t even have to decide who to exclude from a loved one’s funeral. I didn’t catch the thing until after I was vaccinated and then I just spent a couple of days on the couch feeling like shit and I was fine. But it was never going to be easy. By the time it hit I was living alone and coping with a marriage breakdown, an intense and very long distance relationship, recent retirement, all overlaid on a lifetime of heavy drinking and parental abuse. So when it hit I suppose it was a crucible. Or a cauldron. One or the other. Separation, isolation, fear, loneliness, depression, despair. A corrupt, mendacious and incompetent government. I said my story’s not original, and it isn’t. And I was just like many many other people when a lifetime habit of heavy drinking turned to alcoholism and dependence. And things got dark.

But maybe I’m misleading you. Let’s cheer up. I started writing these poems and short stories when I retired in 2018, years before the pandemic and I had a lot of fun writing them. They’re not all bleak and miserable and doom and gloom. Not at all. So while it’s true that some are dark and some are viscerally personal there’s also a lot of fun stuff in here as well. At least I think so. You be the judge.

And I’m sober now, and have every expectation of staying so. I’m not sure it’s acceptable to say this, and I may sound stupid and even callous, but thank you Covid. After fifty years you finally led me to a place where I understood that I was not a person who could drink alcohol safely. And I learned to play the ukulele.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798300313975
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 289