60-year-old male divorcee, slowly writing about a period in his life post divorce; when he ran away with a circus theatre troupe [age 48], and had the greatest years of his life, and the greatest job satisfaction ever as the tour engineer and workshop helper within an acclaimed UK children's circus theatre organisation on tour and at a static school in Cardiff, Wales. I especially enjoyed the many long school holidays when my five kids/grandkids stayed for weeks on end; watching them evolve and grow in confidence and character. Before this point in time, I had never ever worked in the performing arts before, and here I was touring the UK and near Europe, building sets, doing front of house, helping during performance and in workshops, keeping the whole show on the road, keeping the lights on and the sound systems alive and much, much more.
Now tall the kids are mature and off into the world, and I am back into so called normality with a P.A.Y.E. job. I have decided to put as much as I can remember down on paper, I did actually start writing this book whilst on tour in 1999, but my youngest son annihilated my laptop with a pint of fizzy orange drink along with a wealth of digital photography in Y2K and I gave up and forgot about it. Hitting my 60th this year [2011] made me reconsider and I decided to 'go for it' and put it down for all to read 'warts and all'. I'm sure my youngest boy [now 24] could write his own book after two tours in Iraq and three in Afghanistan and a eight year career as an electronics/IT specialist in the British Army which he joined age 16 straight from school after getting the appropriate exam passes.
I'm having difficulty at the moment, not with my/my families storyline, nor with that of my co-workers, but with how to incorperate the circus theatre shows seperate but equally important storyline 'the show' into the general way of things without dragging the reader off on a tangent, perhaps destroying the readability of my own storyline. All help and any ideas greatly appreciated; email irjlhills@gmail.com no matter how daft you may think your thoughts are!
Take care and keep well, all the best, catch you later.
John