The big I am...

See these four? These are my foundations – my Father, my Grandfather, my Great Grandfather and the baby me. Four generations of my family captured in an instant of time in best suit and tie in black and white, although I seem to be wearing a dress and showing my knickers.

These are the blacksmith men, Dutch men. See how strong they look and how small I am by comparison – the small I am. That’s my Great Grandfather holding me. I wonder if he thinks he’s holding another blacksmith - he’s not, he’s holding a wild eyed boy from Freecloud.

I don’t know exactly when my Father started calling me ‘the big I am’ - twelve, thirteen, fifteen – but at some point my ideas and opinions grew and moved away from his and those of the generations of him that came before me and inevitably led me to rebellion.

Maybe it was the time – Bowie, Concorde, Baader Meinhof, Peter Blake, communism, Roxy, the Doomsday Clock, satin, stacks, Vietnam – or maybe it was just me drowning in the frustration that is born of teenage boredom and the hatred of the familiar and repeated. A wild eyed boy from Freecloud imprisoned, set free, by unfamiliar thoughts.

‘You are the big I am!’ He’d spit. Me, the big I am, raging and ranting, disagreeing and storming, some years, maybe a decade and out the other side… so different? No, not so very different at all. Four generations, two alive and all in me, I felt and feel them all in me… somewhere and sometimes.

So Forty years on from big I am, rebellion gone, looking out through Father’s, Grandfather’s, Great Grandfather’s eyes, all in me, felt by me, suit and tie, and not the big I am at all. No longer wild eyed and raving, so firmly fixed in the world of realise - their world.

Dreams lost? No, experience gained.
Anger gone? No, anger withheld.
Hopes dashed? No, modified.
Really? No, not really.

The big I am? No, just me - but free with unfamiliar thought.