Donald Potter

1043 days ago

Defacing statues - the BBC cannot have it both ways

The BBC, the Police and others equivocated on the clearing of the four criminals who pulled down the statue of slave trader turned philanthropist Edward Colston and threw it into the waters of Bristol harbour. “On the one hand but on the other hand” argued the state funded broadcaster and others on the left.  Most of us simply said that the law had been broken and it was not up to individuals to decide what could be defaced or destroyed on the grounds that it offended them.

2062 days ago

Photo Article: the graves of my mother, aunt and grandparents

For years and years my Uncle Chris Booker and I have talked about the graves of his sisters (my mother and Aunt) and that of my grandparents (his parents) in Durweston in Dorset. We have done nothing about it and now, as readers of the Sunday Telegraph discovered today, time is running out.

3683 days ago

The deaths of my mother and aunt

The nature of my mother’s death has been raised by certain “admirers” of mine on Bulletin Boards, the circumstances of my Aunt’s death I have mentioned en passant here before. There are no secrets in the era of the interweb. Both deaths were mentioned in an article by their brother, my Uncle Chris (Booker) in the Daily Mail last week. Slowly I read it early on Saturday morning as it brought a number of thoughts to the surface. Matters not suppressed just forgotten or not reflected upon for a long while.  My mother killed herself. My aunt was murdered. There you have it. A shocking couple of sentences.

My mother died when I was eight and my sisters seven and five. She had become terribly depressed in that amazing sun drenched year of 1976 and – as I discovered only later – first tried to end her life at the height of summer while the rest of us were out walking. My father found her, revived her but thereafter she was confined to various hospitals in Northamptonshire, Banbury and finally in Oxford, the City where she had studied, met my father and where I was born. I saw her once that autumn at the Trout at Godstow and she seemed happy. She clearly was not and within weeks she had hanged herself. I remember being taken out of class by a lovely teacher who was almost in tears as she told me that my mother was dead. I cannot remember how I felt or what happened next. I did not find out how she died until I was fourteen.

Not having a mother was a little unusual in those days