Anton's Ideas

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/blank/”>Blank</a&gt;

a cunningly  concealed prompt

                                                DUMMY RUN

It often strikes me as amusing that many of the followers of my idle thoughts and memories believe me to have had an extraordinary life. A mixture of the greatest love, the most heart breaking tragedy; the enjoyment of celebrity and wealth, the suffering from a horrendous mental illness all my life and the terrible guilt at so seldom being able to live up to my own and my God’s ideas of the the sort of person I should be. And all this played out before the back drop of scenes in four continents and seventy three countries, covering seven wars and a host of peace keeping and diplomatic missions, that on reflection really do read like a novel no one person could possibly have lived. And yet I have, and have survived. Peace has mostly taken the form of dallying in the history libraries of five very old European Universities where five languages were also fully mastered. This was mainly for fun and to satisfy my natural polyglot curiosity,so often soothed into submission by my fingers on the keyboards of so many oddly tuned pianos.

I have been shot twice, survived two helicopter crashes, been blown up so many times I have honestly lost count and yet I have always just gone on to the next scene so that my life has almost been a long running series of films. Except it happened. Well, if I took it all too seriously I would have died of depression by now. Firstly, losing to illness and violence people I never thought I could live on without when they died. And now living with cancer, five strokes and a broken spine to add to my insanity. But I have always been able to see the funny side of existence as well, so I shall concede that I am an anomaly. But two things always help keep me sane; my ability to play music I adore, even If I cannot do this in front of other people, and being blessed with the help of a spiritual side to my life that actually cheers me up when chatting to two special saints who make me laugh when really they should be telling me off. So what is this wonderful build up, this blockbuster’s trailer, leading to? Some of you may have guessed, you have been asking for it for long enough. Yes, I have decided to complete, and be honest in writing, my autobiography. A few eyebrows went up there!

Well, what would you have me do? Hide my bushel in front of a light, thus consigning my life’s story to only the silhouette of its reality? There is no point in that now, for two of the three people whom I had recently promised not to hurt by ‘telling it like it was, is and will be’, have suddenly disappeared from my life. Yes that is sad, hard to take, hard to live with, or rather without, but the final supplicant of my silence has now said ‘Go on’. They did add, ‘it will take you so long to finish it I will probably be gone too by then, anyway!’ So for a while now my blogs may well be shorter than usual, a bit more brief rhyme, and yet everything designed to give me time to finish the most big headed thing a man can think; to assume other people want to read his life story. I often get suicidal at the thought of doing this. A lot of my life, from birth to the age of twenty nine, is already written in verse and yes, chunks of this may well be retained, but do I really want to tell my life story warts and all? Not always, it makes me feel positively suicidal at times. You’ll never guess what I have done to counter this unpleasant possibility.

Just in case I do find I am pressing a self destruct button in myself by determining to complete this literary venture, I have loaded a revolver with six cartridges which I shall keep beside me while I write. Should I feel like ending my life earlier than God would want, he’d stop me anyway, I will pick up that revolver, point it at my head and pull the trigger. The noise should frighten me into having a stiff drink, play a soothing piece of Liszt or Mozart and then resume my tale. I would not need more than six such shocks to finish my story. And I would finish it. I know, I loaded it myself! You see each of those cartridges is a blank.

AWE

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/diverse/”>Diverse</a&gt;

five very diverse celebrations

MY BIRTHDAY POST

I’m not always 100% honest on this site, try as I might, but today I am. It’s my birthday. More importantly this is my 300th post – coincidence – and is also My Feast day (the reason my mother chose my name) – not a coincidence! Now be honest, did ANY of you know it was the feast of Saint Anton? Which of us do you want to hear about first? Let’s make it me.

These are just five of my most memorable birthdays in chronological order. My tenth birthday in 1952 stands out for lovely spring weather, the great fun in our huge mansion and grounds with 20 boys and girls at the party, and the first time I really felt I could not live without always being with one adorable person. The food and party were great, the games indoors and out were super, but then there was Glenda. We had known each other for five years by then and, when we crept away into the orchard and kissed properly for the first time in either of our lives, that day became simply unforgetable.

The next was in 1963, my twenty first. I was at University in Paris and also working in my spare time as a journalist. The family lived on the Ile St Louis behind Notre Dame in the middle of the Seine. Dad offered me money or a fairly expensive party for my 21st. You know me, I went for the party. The day was free, he paid for three of my best friends to come over from London and we had a whale of a time. My parents and sister and three friends had lunch at my favourite restaurant in the centre of Paris. We were well known there and it just went on and on until around four pm. The evening section was an enlarged party in our apartment at home and in the fashionable brasserie on the ground floor and corner of the street overlooking the river. It was Fairyland. We even threw tomatoes at passing gendarmes who could see it was a celebration and just waved. Not like today, children. But wonderful!

My next memorable celebration was only five years later. By then, 1968, I was Reuters’ News Editor for Indo China and living in Saigon. On April the 30th I flew to Vientiane in Laos to help set up the first diplomatic contacts which led to the Paris peace talks on Vietnam. I could not have written that fact at the time, everyone thought it was just a journalistic assignment, but I fortuitously happened to know the North Vietnamese consul in Laos from my university days. I could speak fluently to him, to the South Vietnamese representatives and of course the US negotiator, who the next year held a senior post in President Nixon’s administration. We thrashed out a format for both sides to at least start talking to each other. As a neutral, and the only person in the group who could understand all the others, I was almost Shanghaied into joining the diplomatic teams of three incredibly diverse sets of people. I liked my work too much to accept. But while away a major offensive broke out in Saigon on May 5th and four journalists, including three of my close friends, were killed that Sunday. I flew straight back. There followed two months of hell; running a major news service, arranging two funerals and writing to relatives of dead friends, making sure new staff understood what to do, and only one senior member of the company there with me. My May tenth that year would normally have passed unnoticed. But I had a lot of civilian friends in the British embassy, not least the  ambassador, a Scotsman who had known my mother when they were children, who would not hear of ignoring it. They all insisted we had a really great champagne knees-up round the embassy compound swimming pool to celebrate the most extraordinary birthday in my life.

And briefly two more birthdays that matter an credible amount to me. The first in 1990, the significance of which only became clear much later. My wife and I set out on a pleasant break to include my 48th birthday.  But when we settled down for a drink before dinner that evening she found she had gone off alcohol. Almost impossible. But it made her think and she told me she might, just might, be pregnant.  What a present! She soon found out she was and a fifteen year old prayer was later to be answered in the form of my youngest son. That whole story is more incredible than anything on this page and is told elsewhere. And fifth and most different to any celebration was my birthday in 2,000 ad. That was the day I received confirmation after a biopsy that I had a serious form of cancer. It changed the rest of my life completely when added to the other major illnesses I was fighting. But in one sense this is the perfect point at which to tell you about Saint Anton, or Antoninus as he is in Latin and as I was baptised.

Florence in 1446 was the centre of the Renaissance world. The greatest poets, philosophers emerging painters and  humanist statesmen were starting to question the Church’s right to make pronouncements on science and factual knowledge and political ideas which many wanted to see overthrown. As The Medici family in Florence were the richest people in Italy, probably Europe, and had even started using modern international banking techniques when trading, the world of the high middle ages and its spiritual obedience were coming to an end, as was the universal acceptance of Papal authority in affairs of state. But Florence had just lost its archbishop and fully expected Pope Eugene IV to appoint a princely, rich prelate to the very important post. He didn’t. He remembered regularly chatting to a Dominican Friar who so often pulled him up and advised him when he was about to sanction developments which might not be in the Church’s best interests. He told the City fathers and the Medici family that he was appointing a Dominican preacher whom they might not at first appreciate, but would eventually come to love.

Following one of the most inspired papal appointments of all time, Friar Antonino devoted the next thirteen years to teaching, by prayer, example and above all preaching the rich and somewhat ungodly renaissance Florentines what Christianity was really about. He kept a household of only four regular people. He sold all the cathedral treasures and gave the money to the poor. He housed beggars and the destitute in the vast cathedral rooms and built a huge new hostel for the sick and unfortunate in his city. But above all, by preaching quietly, with sincerity and conviction he managed to turn half the rich families of the magnificent city into the greatest philanthropists Tuscany has ever known. When he died, worn out through neglecting himself, in 1459, Pope Pius II insisted on personally conducting his funeral service. He was canonised sixty four years after his death. My mother knew absolutely nothing about him when she thought that the Anglicised version of Antoninus would be fine for her son.

To have a model like that to live up to is impossible. I pray every day of my life to be worthy to share his name, but I have to say that I have only succeeded in one way. I cannot turn away anyone in need, because God loves them. Be they saint or sinner, believer or infidel, this is the greatest virtue I have been blessed with thanks to all I know of what Saint Anton taught and did. I could never have devoted my life to God as he did, I have not got the will power needed to be that much of a saint. But the example of one man who did have has stayed with me every day of my life.

AWE

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/eat-drink-and-be-merry/”>Eat, Drink, and Be Merry…</a>

last supper before world’s end

AND SO TO ETERNITY

This is a nice idea for a prompt except for two things. Firstly, how would we know the world was going to end tomorrow and even if we did why on earth would we waste time doing anything unnecessary? But allowing for these two disputable points this is how I would spend my last day if I really knew it was.

The news bulletin on the television that interrupted all the rest of the programmes to tell us of the imminent apocalypse was couched in such credible terms that just about everyone believed it. I heard it at 9.30am and so had missed out on several hours which I could have used to do things that mattered to me before the end. Not least booking a ticket to the South Seas so I would get a few more hours of life.

Firstly I opened my notebook that I kept by my bed and in which I kept the names of everyone for whom I had been asked to pray.  They had to come first. I managed an hour of sweat pouring down my forehead as I begged my three favourite saints and God Himself and his family to forgive and save all my relatives and friends who had expressed recent doubts about the existence of God. I really prayed myself out for them because Heaven would not be Heaven without a lot of them and I just wanted to remind God of this. What an unnecessary thing to do!

Well, obviously I then had to visit those of my friends who lived closed to me but for some reason or other were lonely in their hearts or minds and had to be cheered up. Oh just think of them, poor souls. There was Andy who suffered from internittent depression and was never sure who his friends were. I just held his hand for fifteen minutes and at least raised a smile on his face when I pointed out we were all going down the same path at the same time and he was no longer on his own. His thanks were in his eyes.

Then I went round to one of my old girlfriends with whom I had never made love but who always enjoyed a few minutes with me because whenever we saw each other we laughed ourselfelves sick. My goodbye to her was deeply personal, intimate and comprehensible only to ourselves. She really was a poppet. I then knelt by my bed and conjured up Gemma’s face. It was the closest I could get at this late stage to contact with someone who had raised life on earth to a level that as a youngster I never believed possible. She called herself my spiritual advisor, but she was more than that. If you have ever had someone in your life who knew you better than you knew yourself then you know who I mean. She was thousands of miles away yet at the same time right next to me.

And finally I had a friend whose very existence was doubted by most of my closest relatives and friends. From a very young age, Saint Rita, had kept watch over me, encouraged me when the world was dark and my hopes were dying. She literally put her arms round my soul and quietly loved me in her beautiful soft Italian voice. As the patron saint of hopeless causes I had  to have so many chats with her, but she was always there. As I now pray at my bed and try to make up for all the sins I have committed in my life she is there and, as she promised, will be to the end. I am happy just to let her stay with me until God tells me how I am going to Heaven.

But how on earth could I eat anything in that state? It would choke me!

AWE

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/daily-prompt-4/”>Hello, Goldilocks!</a>

when I first posted this  blog wordpress were having a lot of ping problems and I have found that several of my followers never read itso, as it means a lot to me, I decided to post it again. I shall attend to Goldilocks after that.

THE NIGHT MY MOTHER MET A SAINT IN HER PYJAMAS.

in reply to  “which post would I most like to be remembered by.”

The date is forever engraved in my memory. It was the 18th of October 1961 and our family was enjoying probably the best holiday we ever had together. My father had spent the summer covering the Franco-Algerian peace talks in Evian on the banks of Lake Geneva, or Lac Leman as the French call it, and he and mum deserved their three week break. My sister managed to bunk off university in London for a few weeks and I did the same from the Sorbonne in Paris. Mum was terminally ill and we all knew it could well be the last time the four of us would get a proper vacation together. We planned a drive down to Rome, via Switzerland, Milan and Florence and were returning, first south to Positano for a week’s stay and returning via Pompeii and up the Mediterranean coast to take in Pisa, Genoa, Monaco,  Nice and the Rhone valley. Five days were to be spent in the Italian capital. The third of these was the most memorable day in my life.

Although an Australian, dad was the chief correspondent in Paris of a major American news agency and my mother was a retired entertainer of considerable fame in Britain whose health had cut short her career when she was thirty five, just after the start of the second world  war. Indeed my birth in 1942 was the last normal act on her part in her life. Being born and brought up a staunch Catholic in Glasgow in Scotland she made sure that my sister and I were educated at the best Catholic schools we could be. My agnostic father always kept his promise to bring us up as Catholics, making sure we never missed Mass on Sundays, but then as often as possible none of us missed a couple of hours at our local pub on a Sunday lunch time either. Mum was often bed ridden and had to spend her drinking hours with friends at home in our thirty seven room mansion near Richmond Park. You can see we were a rather unusual quartet. But the greatest thing about my formative years was that all the family had terrific senses of humour and, I can honestly say, really loved each other.

I grew up a Catholic who was wonderfully close to their  Faith and served Mass as often as I could. I quite shocked the monks at the Abbey which ran our school when I turned up at the sixth form ball in 1959, I would have been seventeen I suppose, with Teresa, the most stunningly beautiful girl, on my arm. She is still one of my closest friends although we were never sweethearts, but she did enough to dispel the certainty amongst many of the school staff that I was going to become a priest. Indeed she singled out the headmaster, she knew him because her brother was at the school, and said to him in a little louder voice than was necessary, “Yes, Father, Anton really loves God more than any boy I have met. But boy, Father, does he also love me. I think God’s got a battle on his hands with us!”

My mother was told of this story a few days later and phoned Teresa to thank her.  It was with this type of family background, both religious and public, that the four of us set out for Italy in the autumn of 1961. When we drove off from the family home on the Ile Saint Louis in Paris we were all determined to have a really good time. I was nineteen and a half and my sister not quite twenty one. The drive down was wonderful as we went both over and under various Alps, attended a concert at La Scala in Milan and swooned at just about everything we saw in Florence. But my sister and I could see the journey was starting to take its toll on mum. She had seriously advanced emphysema and used an inhaler most of the day. As the weather became hotter and the air less pleasant she began to find walking any distance at all very difficult. Indeed she had to miss the meal we had out on the first night in Rome with dad’s counter part there an American journalist who had known him for several years in London. He was a Catholic and told us that he had been keeping a really super surprise up his sleeve for us all. He turned to dad during the meal and said,

“Paul, you’ll all love this. Did you know that in two days it is the fiftieth anniversary of the overseas press club in the Vatican and a very select number of correspondents have been invited to meet Pope John and have an informal audience with him that evening? They desperately wanted a Catholic family to be part of this and I told the Bishop organising the audience that you, as an Australian journalist of note, your two English Catholic children and your well known Scottish Catholic wife were all in town and thanks to your job could represent the international media family. What do you think?”

In all honesty I thought he was joking. He knew how I would react and was quite right. We all said yes but asked if we could not tell anyone about mum because there was no way she would want to miss what would be one of the greatest days of her life. We were right. She said she would go if it killed her and the three of us genuinely feared that it could.  As the time to leave the hotel got nearer mum was getting worse, She donned a black evening coat and black lace veil saying she could hide her inhaler up her sleeve and not be seen as she used it. My sister also wore a black head scarf but refused to cover her face, not that anyone asked her to. Dad just wore a grey suit. Then came the real penance of the night.

Our taxi dropped us by the papal gate entrance to the Vatican palace just by the colonnade, but we were told we had to walk up to the ante room where the Holy Father was receiving the foreign press. Mum had got ready in extremely quick time and we were only concerned in helping her manage the stairs to the small hall and room where we were invited to wait for Pope John to arrive. How mum made it I will never know, but she did. Then came the high point of the evening, indeed for me, of my life.

A jovial, smiling octogenarian literally beamed his way into the room and the fifty or so papal guests were astounded at the informality and good fun that pervaded the whole forty five minutes we were with Pope John. But just as he was scheduled to leave the Holy Father cast all four of us into a state of almost disbelieving happiness. He did the most wonderful thing. Speaking in fluent French he asked if he could meet Paul, Sarah, Michele and Anton the Catholic family from all round the world who had come to see him. He approached us and in a few brief words told us all how glad he was to meet us. HE was glad to meet US! If he only knew. As he blessed us and let us kiss his ring I cast a glance at mum, the tears streaming down her face, and realised she would have climbed Mount Everest to go through that moment in her life.

Then came a lovely scene of real humour. The apostolic delegate to the media asked if any of us needed the lifts as the stairs often proved too much for elderly or sick people. Mum turned to dad and my sister and me and said, “It may have half killed me but I’m glad I walked up those stairs. It was worth it just to be able to say that I had met a Saint in my pyjamas. I was so ill I didn’t have time to dress tonight, that’s all I’m wearing under this coat.”

Dad and Michele laughed and she said, “Mum you mean the Pope, not a saint.” All mum replied was,

“I know what I said.” And the proof that she did is that on the 27th of April last year, on the 108th anniversary of mum’s birth, Pope Francis Canonized Pope John XXIII, officially raising him to the highest dignity possible for a human being to attain. I will never know how mum knew!

Anton Wills-Eve