Simple lesson in writing the story of your life. Just put down on paper the words "I remember" - and then think of a small incident from your childhood. Write about five to 10 lines on it and stop. Later you might think of your first day at school; a paragraph or so on that. Then, again, you remember someone at school who impressed you particularly or annoyed you. Don't try to do it all at once. When the spirit moves you, set down another short "I remember". A German newspaper has been devoting a page to remembrances on these lines. So far eight contributors to Die Zeit of Hamburg have had their say. The most recent is a legal luminary, Uwe Wesel, who has written books including a History of Law. He begins with a vignette of a moving tuck-shop-man. "I remember the man with the Turkish honey . . . He came on a tricycle; in front a wooden basket with a glass top, beneath it the sticky lump (presumably slices of honeycomb). He had a bell to call us children. He took out the portions with a spatula and sold it to us in paper bags. Unfortunately, during the war he didn't come." (The writer was born in 1933.) "I remember milk in the aluminium cans that I brought to the milkman. In Hamburg that was often down a few steps. The can was simple and lovely, a matt aluminium; the handle had a wooden grip and the top a little button to take it off. The milk was filled in with a hand pump. There was always a queue." Then: "I remember Adolf Hitler on the radio. His harsh voice, the clipped way of speaking. Today nobody would take that seriously." So, in about four inches of type in the newspaper, we have these early impressions. Some contributors might make their notes the bones of an autobiography. "Ich erinnere mich . . . I remember . . ."
He remembers the clouds of smoke over bombed Hamburg in July 1943 and the smell of burning, and the daytime darkness. People were streaming off on foot or bicycle or with handcarts to Schleswig-Holstein. He remembered his father's SA (Stormtrooper) uniform hanging in the children's cupboard while he was away at war. He remembers an editor of Die Zeit, when he was looking for a job, saying: "No, it's too early. One can only become a journalist when you have failed in another calling. I myself am a failed orchestra leader." One last contribution. Just before the Abitur (leaving cert) a pupil wrote on the blackboard: "What's the point of Latin when you're healthy?" Cryptic. Y