Don Balkwill

Have you ever had a scrapbook, a book where you stored your photographs and memories? Well, this is a scrapbook of the memorable moments in my life from the last 25years. Why do I feel it is important that my memories should be preserved? You may well ask! In a word, ‘Vanity’ There are things that have happened to me in the last 25 years which I am quite proud of and which I hope my relatives, friends, descendants and others will be interested in reading about. Even if they aren’t, at least it kept me busy through the lockdown months of the Coronavirus pandemic!

There are some very special memories in the book, for example, when I met and married my wife Marilyn, when I had a play performed for the first time in a real theatre and when I was asked to perform the opening ceremony of a newly constructed bridge, in the area where I grew up. I’m quite proud of them all. I’ve never been famous and it’s unlikely I ever will be, but that doesn’t matter; well not that much anyway!.

What caused me to put this together? Well, in November 2018, I was diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer and was told it was too late to stop it. After the initial furore had died down one of the thoughts that went through my head was that perhaps I should write a positive and possibly humorous account of my journey through the ups and downs of my treatment. But then I thought would anybody really want to read about what I’m going through? There’s enough suffering and pain in the world, without me moaning about it. So I decided to put together a book of what I’ve enjoyed doing over the last 25 years.

So... this is a book of memories that are special to me, I hope you enjoy reading about them. My apologies if some of the photographs are not very clear or crisp. I’ve had to download many of the images from the internet and doctor them. The originals were lost when I had a computer crash a couple of years ago. I did have backups on an external drive but that packed up too; Bit like me really!