9th month, '9' years

in september

It’s the first of september in the year 2009. This day, ten years ago, I came back from my little room between Sabrina and the Forest. It had been a wild adventure. An ephemeral objective. Always hovering. But never in the same place for long enough to be achieved. It was a short-lived episode. Three months short of three inconsequential years. There’s little enough to recall. The little local branch library where I read the best-sellers to find out how they ticked. On alternate Wednesdays the Junior Room housed the Dean Writers’ Circle where I found I could write poetry as well as imaginative prose. There was even an erotic ghost story for a Halloween Party in an old haunted house deep in the Forest. There was more. But the curtain came firmly down long before the first interval.

Today the news bulletins are full of September 1st, 1939. My brother and I were on holiday with Auntie Lilla and Uncle Harry in Caerphilly. Return to school was too far away to encroach on consciousness. September 1st. It must have been a Friday. Then came Sunday. 11 o’clock on the morning of the 3rd. We two, we blessed two. (Ugh! Why must you do this?) We sat in the dining room and listened to the wireless. It was the voice of Neville Chamberlain, our Prime Minister, the Man from Munich. Not now did he speak of peace in our time. Now he spoke of an ultimatum to which no reply had been received. We were at war with Germany. Somewhere an air raid siren sounded. The BBC went off the air. Temporarily. It was a false alarm.

1947 – and I was ready to respond to my call-up papers. My army paybook had its first entry on September 5th.

1949. September – and my time of grandeur et servitude militaire is ended and on the day of my demobilisation I had held that fateful conversation with myself. I would not return to the Royal Academy of Music. Realistically, for once, I did not see myself practising the piano for six hours a day to achieve my objective of being a world-class concert pianist. It was time to do something else. I did. I prepared to go up to Oxford.

’59. I had achieved one of my boyhood ambitions. I was a cathedral organist. That was the job though the title had changed. I was Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral. Bricks without straw .. .. But on the day my appointment was noticed on the Court Page of The Times, Tommy Armstrong rang me from the RAM. I was invited to join his professional staff. The money was pitiable. The prestige enormous. I did well by the RAM. And the RAM did well by me.

’69. September. I am nearing the end of my first year as Assistant Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, in Sydney.

’79. September. Time to start packing my bags, ready to fly away.

2009, September 1st. The years ending in 9 often mark a turning point in my life.

I sum the numerals of my birth date. 5 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 2 + 7 = 2 + 7 = 9.

The incipit of the 9th month of a ‘9’ year.

quo vadis amice meus

The curfew tolls .. .. not yet .. .. not yet.

© francis cameron, oxford, 1 september 2009