How it began

"Oh for goodness' sake!" I growled in exasperation as my elder son turned tail and dashed back up the stairs to brush his teeth. At the age of seventeen, how could he possibly still need to be reminded to do this? Now he was definitely going to be too late for the train. There was nothing for it - I would have to drive him to school.

I sighed.

Of course, if I was at all skilled in the art of tough love, I would have taken him to the station to catch the later train and deal with the consequences when he got to school. But I'm rather patchy on the tough love thing. Besides, being fairly newly self-employed, I had quickly come to treasure the twice-daily few minutes that constituted the school run (or station run, to be more accurate).

I see so little of them these days, even though we all live under one roof. Even our once sacrosanct evening meal has fallen prey to our extraordinary busyness. So in very short order I had found myself planning my days around the school run.

In the morning, we need to leave the house no later than 7:40 if they're to make the 7:51 train. We usually make it. When we don't, I drive them to school. I have the luxury of flexibility to accommodate the lost time, and it gives me an extra twenty minutes or so of their company.

Since my elder son is in sixth form, he doesn't always have a full day of lessons. When he has a later start, I get seven or eight treasured minutes alone with each of my boys.

Today I was obviously going to get 20 minutes alone with this one!

"Come on!" I yelled up the stairs.

"SorrEEE!" he answered as he hurtled down the stairs for the second time that morning. It's truly remarkable how teenagers can imbue that one word with the stubborn refusal to own up to any culpability, and the full knowledge that you think they should!

I sighed again and changed gear mentally as I reversed into the road. "I'll drive you to school. We're too late for the train."

"Thanks, Mom." He was grateful, but he was also accustomed to my capitulation in this matter.

As we drove, we chatted about the sort of inconsequentialities that are not at all inconsequential. I have found that the non-confrontational, eyes-forward scenario affords them the freedom to open up far more than they do when we're toe to toe. I am blessed with two teenage sons who like to chat. I am mindful of the rarity of this.

Somehow we got onto the subject of Julius Paul. All things being equal, I ought to have forgotten him, since I last saw him about 30 years ago. But I discovered that I had not forgotten at all. I began to tell my son about him.

After I had dropped him off at school, I had the twenty minute drive back home, during which the story of Julius Paul took root in my chest with its demands to be told to a wider audience.

I have been consumed with the need to write a book on numerous occasions. I have usually been able to fob it off with a few chapters of varying quality. I don't see myself as a novelist. Would-be novelists are a dime a dozen, and few of them write as well as they think they do. I suspect I am no different. But this book seemed to be different. It came complete with title and methodology.

And this is it....

From the outset let me say that Julius Paul was real, and that that was his real name. I chose to do this because he is likely to have been one of life's forgotten people, and this was one way of remedying that. Beyond that, fact is inextricably entwined with fiction. Several other people in the book are also real, but just as many are not. Some of the real people have been given motives and actions that are purely the product of my own imagination. If you recognise yourself or one of your relatives, and you or they are shown in a less than flattering light, please excuse my liberty and assume that I have blended that character with one of less noble repute.