Michael J. H. Godfrey

There is an inchoate first memory, a lawn, a mother in a floral print dress on a veranda, a wee me on her knee. I suspect it is a subsequent interpolation injected into my memory bank via a photo seen many years later. The second memory may be more true: I am standing beside a pink army hut (yes, alright, conspicuously repainted from its original camouflage green), crying while clutching a post card, because the postcard was from a grandmother who I don't ever recall meeting, and she had died ... which she did.

No: that's probably an interpolation, too.

Then there are the firmer memories of a Ghana early childhood, childhood strictly colonial, of course, of Britishness being beaten out of me in a subsequent New Zealand upbringing, and of adult years oscillating between Australia and New Zealand; of academic and sporting interests and careers, of universities and parishes (after becoming a priest) and juggling a love of literature with an unfashionable love of faith.

All these memories fleshed out with what one wag calls "an unnecessary number" (eight) children (from two marriages), a hotchpotch of interests, a plethora of dogs, a love of oxford commas, and a random amble through life's vicissitudes.