It had never been my intention to write an autobiography. To do so smacked of arrogance: it was not as if I were a rock star, an explorer, a footballer or a member of the miscreant aristocracy. It is true that I have had an interesting and remarkably lucky life, but that is far from unique and I never thought to document it. I have never kept a diary, except when travelling, but I do have a very retentive memory, all the more so for its being permanently exercised by my being a writer.
Then, in October 2002, I was diagnosed with the nastiest type of brain tumour around. A craniotomy did little but confirm I was suffering from a curiously named cancer known as a glioblastoma multiforma grade IV. It was incurable, essentially inoperable and immune to chemotherapy. Whilst I was convalescing, with a metal plate and half a dozen screws in my head, and most of the cancer still in situ, my two children – both in their twenties – asked me to tell them about my early life.
Having tried, without even a smidgen of success, to persuade my father to do the same for me, and tell me about our forebears – he went to his grave in adamant silence on the matter and I had
never thought to ask my mother, who had died suddenly and at a comparatively young age seven years earlier – I decided I would tackle the task of writing about my childhood, which was spent in Hong Kong.
Once I had set out upon the task, the past began to unfold – perhaps it is better to say unravel – before me. I did have some assistance in the form of a scrapbook and several photograph albums my mother had compiled, yet these did not so much prompt as confirm certain memories, flesh out anecdotes that have spun in my mind for years, rekindle lost names and put faces to them.
If the truth be told, I have never really left Hong Kong, its streets and hillsides, wooded valleys, myriad islands and deserted shores with which I was closely acquainted as a curious, sometimes devious, not unadventurous and streetwise seven-year-old. My life there has been forever repeating itself in the recesses of my mind, like films in wartime cartoon cinemas, showing over and over again as if on an endless loop.
This is hardly surprising. Hong Kong was my home, was where I spent my formative years, is where my roots are, is where I grew up.
Martin Booth
Devon, 2003