When I was 4 months old, my mother died suddenly and my father was left to look after me all by himself. This is how I looked at the time.
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I had no brothers or sisters.
So all through my boyhood, from the age of 4 months onward, there were just the two of us, my father and me.
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We lived in an old gipsy caravan behind a filling station. My father owned the filling station and the caravan and a small field behind, but that was about all he owned in the world. It was a very small filling station on a small country road surrounded by fields and woody hills.
While I was still a baby,my father washed me and fed me and changed my nappies and did all the millions of things that a mother normally does for her child. That is not an easy task for a man, especially when he has to earn his living at the same time repairing motor-car engines and serving customers with petrol.
But my father didn't seem to mind. I think that all the love he felt for my mother when she was alive he now lavished upon me. During my early years, I never had a moment's unhappiness or illness and here I am on my fifth birthday.
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I was now a scruffy little boy as you can see with grease and oil all over me, but that was because I spent all day in the workshop helping my father with the care.
