All That You Touch
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I’m not sure when I grew up, or if I grew up, or if it matters. When I’m with children they certainly put me in the “grown up” camp, assuming I’d rather talk about machines and money than read them stories. Sometimes that’s true (although not always) so perhaps I am. So, being grown up, allow me to make you a proposal. We do not grow up gradually, with every day much like the one before but with a little more wisdom, but we grow up with an event. A specific moment which we may not notice at the time. For example, when we first realise that we cannot conquer death. Or when we lose something or someone that we can never get back, like a pet cat or our virginity. I think I can pinpoint my moment. It was a world before MP3’s and even before CD’s. My hi-fi was my proudest possession. I’d saved up for it for months and with some help from my parents had finally bought one a few months before. Wiring it up was sheer joy – it’s a slight pity looking back that I never carried that forward to other practical matters in later life. Never mind.
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About the Book
This is a book about how one band's music changed one man's life. From the moment that I first heard 'The Dark Side of the Moon' as a young boy, the music of Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett has been with me at every step of my journey through my teenage years in Essex, University in Nottingham, and what the grown-up world had in store for me - which was an awful long way from scarecrows with birds on their hats and straw everywhere. This book describes that journey, the role the music played (and still plays), and covers all of my grand passions from the poetry of John Keats through Leicester Tigers through my quest to find patterns in prime numbers and the exact whereabouts of an electron. This book will appeal to anyone who is deeply moved by music, anyone who ever suffered a crisis, and anyone who ever wondered why they grew up to be the person they became.
About the Author
I live with my wife and a very small fish in Hertfordshire. My great loves are the music of Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett; reading (particularly Keats and Dickens - I'm a member of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association and a Friend of the Protestant Cemetery in Rome where Keats is buried); rugby (I'm a passionate supporter and season ticket holder at Leicester Tigers); number theory (I'm participating in the search for large prime numbers); and the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (I'm an Associate of the SETI project in California). I'm working on a happiness-centred life, inspired by Mother Theresa ("Let no-one come to you without feeling better and happier"), Gandhi ("be the change you wish to see") and Lance Armstrong ("Pain is temporary, quitting is forever"). I've become involved as a Patron with the Syd Barrett Fund, which helps the charity Escape Artists to raise funds for arts projects in the mental health sector, extending to other individuals the enjoyment and benefits that Syd found in the arts. I'd like to travel in space, and ideally make contact with aliens, before I die. I miss Sean, Rosie and Maria.