NEWS FLASH

substantial new content added to Rites of Passage and Hymn Prefaces pages.  Thank you for reading  - average weekly page hits since New Year in advance of thirty.

LATE EXTRA

even more new content on Hymn Prefaces

LATE FINAL

new page - Gift Relations - added

welcome to my contributon to 21st century vanity publishing

click on the appropriate links to plumb the depths of my psyche

visit the "what's new" page to see what I've been up to recently

(on this blog I have tried as far as possible to acknowledge not only direct quotations but also ideas taken from other people.  My apologies to anyone whose quotations or ideas I have inadvertently passed off as my own.  Readers are welcome to use material from the blog on the same basis - please acknowledge where you got it from)

WHY A M CURTIS?

I realise that it defeats the object of vanity publishing to do it under a pseudonym.  However, there is something very 19th century about adopting a nom de plume, and I did have a great-uncle Bramwell, which almost makes me an honorary Bronte.  In addition, I am a little wary of internet trolling, identity theft and so on - this does not affect your statutory rights to leave good-natured abuse on my visitors' page.  (Please note the optimistic apostrophe position in visitors': I hope there will be more than one of you.)

A M Curtis was the maiden name of my great-aunt Alice.  When I was small, she and great-uncle Sid used to take me for days out on Exmoor, the main highlight being the stop at a village general store for ice-cream.  On one occasion we stopped in Simonsbath, where above the door of the sub-post-office was the legend A M Curtis, licensed to sell tobacco.  Mr Curtis himself came forward with a hearty "can I help you?"  Uncle Sid's response was to make his trademark audible intake of breath, before intoning thoughtfully, "A M Curtis".  [further pause for audible breathing] "My wife was called A M Curtis".

A considerable character in her own right, as witnessed by the fact that she could take on uncle Sid on his own terms, Alice was known for long periods of silent reflection, which is the major reason why I have usurped her name for this blog.  My grandmother used to refer to these incommunicado periods as Alice being "in a coma".  Within the family aunt Alice was whispered to be Anglo-Indian.  In fact we now believe her mother to have been Malayan;  her father was a rubber planter of sufficient position in the community to have a statue to him erected in the centre of Kuala Lumpur.  By all accounts it is still there, strong and silent, if not exactly in a coma.