Where Is The Key?

Description

This book follows on from when the story of my childhood, told in Child of the Thirties, ended. I begin this memoir in the summer holidays after I left school in 1945; free time in those days is very different from free time today! My mother was still in a psychiatric hospital. I have tried to contract the events of over sixty years into a single book, giving a personal view of some the many changes that have occurred in society, together with some incidents in my personal life. I discuss a number of issues concerning the changes in care of the mentally ill. There are many contrasts made between aspects of life during the past sixty years with expectations and aspirations of today.

Constancy is a theme that occurs throughout the book. The constancy of my fathers concern for my mother; his regular visiting, and unsuccessful attempt to have her living at home again; his lonely life was impressed upon me as I wrote. In 1959 I met m mother again, and saw her for the first time in twenty years. From then on I kept in constant touch my mother, visiting her regularly until she died in 1992