A Life More Ordinary

Running backwards, forwards and sideways in time.

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Writer. 52 years old with a tendency to overthink and overshare. Likes to create worlds and people. Dad. Survivor. Rubbish at writing bio entries.

  • We Let the Stars Go – Part Two

    Just One of Those Things

    The sun was high in the cloudless sky as the faintest of breezes whispered across the cricket ground, teasing the pages of newspapers at the boundary edge and hinting at the possibility of the weather closing in later in the evening.

    Out in the middle, shimmering in the heat haze, our final two batters were seeing out the remainder of our innings as I finally removed my pads from my sweaty legs having recently cut, pulled, hoiked and edged my way to a not-particularly rapid half-century to take our team’s overall score past the 200 mark. I casually threw my pads into my kit bag before sitting back on the stone steps at the entrance to the old, wooden pavilion. Behind me, the club tea ladies busied themselves slicing fruit cake and filling glass jugs with weak squash as on the jukebox at the adjoining bar Roxette questioned a presumably flighty love interest on their abilities to do whatever it was that they did.

    A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead, so, in search of something with which to dry myself, I rummaged among my previously discarded pads, gloves and box, hoping against hope that there would be a clean, soft and delightfully fragrant towel within. Discovering that no such towel was to be located, I picked out the only thing that was even remotely suitable for drying and while soft, the old pair of boxer shorts that had been in my bag for about three months were neither clean nor delightfully fragrant. Undeterred, I wiped them across my brow, pulling a face of disgust as I inhaled the pungent, stale smell from the black material.

    I opened my eyes to discover that I was no longer alone and instantly tried to make it look as though I hadn’t just wiped my face with my own dirty shreddies.

    The newcomer, who I had previously known well enough to nod a polite hello to, looked at me through the bluest of eyes, a mixture of curiosity, surprise and a hint of revulsion all channelled into one raised eyebrow beneath her short, blonde hair.

    ‘I hope they were clean…’ she smiled.

    My cheeks flared what I hoped was a gentle pink but in reality I suspected that I looked positively puce.

    ‘Ah…er…so do I,’ I replied, awkwardly, wrinkling my nose at the memory of the smell and tossing the offending garment back into the darkest corner of my bag.

    I floundered and scrabbled around mentally in search of a follow up comment to try and salvage the situation.

    ‘Could have been worse though…’

    She frowned and I fancied that I could actually see her thought processes on exactly how it could have been worse written across her forehead.

    ‘Could it though?’ she asked, after what seemed like an eternity.

    ‘They…could have been… someone else’s?’ I winced, painfully aware of quite how badly this conversation seemed to be going.

    An uncomfortable silence hung between us that was finally broken by the sound of her laughter.

    I relaxed a little, relieved to have seemingly reduced my level of shame to somewhere in the region of mild embarrassment.

    ‘Melissa,’ she said with a smile, holding out her hand, which I shook gently before introducing myself, wondering whether or not I should have given my hand another wipe after the whole ‘pants debacle’.

    As our innings ended, thirteen hot, sweaty cricketers and two slightly cooler, sweaty umpires made their way off the field and filed into the ramshackle clubhouse, queuing for tuna and cucumber sandwiches and picking at piles of grapes and melon in a bid to convince themselves that they were being healthy in direct contradiction to the amount of alcohol that would likely be consumed later that evening. After a brief chat with my teammates, I made my way back to Melissa where we made small talk over lemon drizzle cake and a couple of home-made sausage rolls that had already flaked pastry over my plate.

    ‘So,’ I asked, covering my mouth with my hand as a sudden thought made a break for freedom from my consciousness, ‘big cricket fan?’

    She gave a small smile, which in turn became a short laugh as she looked coyly at the ground. I winced, internally as even with my appalling social skills I began to figure out where this might be heading.

    ‘Ah…I like it, but I’m not a huge fan. My dad used to play a bit but he’s swapped his googlies for runner beans these days.’

    ‘Well, I hope he had it done on the NHS,’ I joked and she was kind enough to laugh at my feeble attempt at humour.

    It was my turn to look sheepish, my ego, while neither huge nor out of control, was still enjoying a gentle massaging.

    ‘I think I’ve seen you around the club quite a bit lately,’ I said in as casual a manner as I could manage, while my morals swooped down and perched upon my shoulders, my disappointment at the current situation not far behind as I knew how this should unfold. How it had to unfold.

    Again, that demure smile, her eyes looking up at me from beneath her fringe. She opened her mouth to speak and then cast a glance over my shoulder at my captain, who had come to discuss the second innings of the game with me.

    I grimaced an apology in Melissa’s direction and she gave me a disappointed smile that my inner voice was quite happy to point out to me was nothing like the disappointed smile I was going to draw from her later that evening. My heart sank as I reluctantly turned my attention back to the suddenly unimportant game of cricket.

    The second innings was wrapped up within thirty of the scheduled forty-five overs and most of that time for me had been spent trying not to look as though I was peering through my sunglasses in the direction of the bar, where Melissa sat nursing a coke and chatting with Alf, a former player of the club who, now in his eighties, spent every Saturday afternoon telling everyone and anyone how cricket was much more difficult in ‘his day’ playing on uncovered pitches and using ancient equipment. To be fair to Alf, most of us felt that he had a point – the problem was that we’d heard that point repeated ad nauseum but still appreciated that we had an unspoken responsibility to accommodate Alf’s opinions and most of us were generally happy to see him on a weekly basis as a stark reminder of what awaited us in years to come. Somewhere at the back of our collective consciousness I imagine that we were treating him how we would hope to be treated in the autumnal days of our lives.

    After a quick shower, timed so in a bid to avoid the attentions of ‘Grabby Ben’, who had a penchant for pinching, slapping or cupping whatever areas of flesh that he was able to find of his teammates, I dressed and packed away my kit before heading to the bar, keen to catch up with Melissa, the nervous excitement dulled by the certainty of what had to happen.

    It took half an hour to extract ourselves from Alf’s reminisces of days gone by, which we both listened to politely, making what we hoped were appropriate noises at the right moments and nodding sagely when the conversation became more serious, in particular when Alf would recall former players who had long since departed on their awfully big adventures.

    With the sun sinking slowly behind the nets on the far side of the pitch, we stole away from the crowd and wandered slowly off towards the side of the ground opposite the clubhouse, where a small bank of grass rose up towards a narrow stream that had run dry due to the current high temperatures. Amid more small talk, we sat down on the grass and watched the beginnings of the usual Saturday night drunken shenanigans involving Vodka Pete, The One-Balled Womble and Stairway to Kevin, so-called because after every game he played he would inevitably be found passed out on the stairs by his wife the following morning.

    It was Melissa who broached the elephant in the room. Or technically outside the room and on the field of play, but you get the idea.

    ‘So…your girlfriend didn’t come to watch this week then?’ she asked, tentatively and with a tone of apprehension not quite hidden in her voice.

    I puffed out a long, drawn-out breath and turned to look at her, tilting my head slightly to the side. She avoided my gaze for a moment.

    ‘No,’ I replied, slowly and quietly. ‘Out with friends, I think.’

    She nodded.

    ‘You don’t sound very sure,’ she frowned, laying back on the slope before propping herself up on one elbow.

    ‘I’m not, if I’m honest. I’ve got my doubts. But…’

    I picked at the grass between my legs, my tired heart having been given an absolute pummelling of late by indecision, insouciance and infidelity. I began to doubt my own sanity and my values. This moment, right here, felt good and full of fire and right. It felt new and exciting and a million miles from the tortured self-doubt and the pain that I’d been experiencing for weeks. No, for the whole of my life. It would be the easiest thing in the world right now to lay down here and betray the person who I thought I was, who I wanted to be. The easiest thing. And the most difficult.

    ‘I wasn’t not mentioning her,’ I began, wanting to be understood as I always did. Wanting to make things right.

    Melissa reached out and put her hand on my arm. Her touch was cool and soft against my skin. I looked into her eyes, then down to her lips, sweet and tempting, mesmerising and bewitching.

    ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But it’s not just on you. I could have mentioned her at any time, couldn’t I?’

    I shrugged, not grumpily more in resignation. Our eyes met again and I saw compassion and understanding along with my determination to be a better person reflected back at me.

    ‘Timing’s never really been my strong point…’ she smiled. ‘Thank you, for…not doing what you want to do. And what I want you to do.’

    I wanted to take her hands in mine. I wanted to lose myself in her eyes and in her scent. I wanted to kiss her and find that time had slowed so that I could hold eternity in an hour.

    But time had other ideas. And it began to rain. Forwards in time…

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

  • We Let the Stars Go – Part One

    That was Then, but this is Now

    There was, as the song by Prefab Sprout begins, a girl I used to know. Isn’t that how all the best stories start? A boy and a girl. Or a girl and a girl or…come on, if you haven’t got the picture by now you’ve really not been paying attention. Discrimination doesn’t live here anymore, as Cliff Richard may have once sung. Or not.

    So, there was a girl I used to know. And this story starts at Christmas, because all of the best stori- oh, wait, I’ve done that bit elsewhere, forwards in time. Or was it backwards? It’s difficult to remember sometimes. Anyway, it sort of starts at Christmas, but it also started a long time before. That’s the thing about time. We see it as a strict, linear progression from moment to moment, inexorably rushing towards our final destination. But what if, and you might need to bear with me here, what if it wasn’t?

    So, it was Christmas. Or very nearly. Near enough to be able to panic about all of the things left to do, but still far enough away to be able to do something about it. Four days to go then. Cards had been written and posted, because that was what people still did back then and social media posts had been posted, signing off for a few days because that was what people did now. You can choose. If you choose to send Christmas cards, then turn to Page…do you remember those books? This isn’t one of them.

    As I made my way through the town centre, sidestepping to avoid oncoming children and pensioners alike, I considered my options. Late-night shopping had been reasonably successful so far in that I’d managed to get in and out of a handful of shops without screaming at anyone and having only heard Wham’s Last Christmas three times. With an hour to go before closing time, I navigated the streets of my latter teen years on autopilot, not entirely sure where I wanted to go but certain that wherever I ended up would be fine.

    To my left, up on the bandstand, the Salvation Army struck up, trombones, tubas and the occasional unnecessary triangle coming together to entertain the masses with an uplifting rendition of Good King Wenceslas. Surrounding stalls stood by resolute against the chill, manned by nondescript figures touting for business, while braziers burned gently beneath hot chestnuts and a poorly stacked line of as yet unsold Christmas trees seemed to sway in time to the music like a queue of drunks at closing time. If Michael Bublé had put in a sudden appearance and burst into song, nobody would have batted an eyelid. I smiled to myself, reminded of youthful indiscretions upon these very same cobbled streets, stolen kisses and furtive fumblings in the shadows of time.

    I blinked twice to clear my vision as those shadows flitted and shifted like elusive ghosts and an unexpected chill crept across my shoulders. A memory stirred and looking up to the stars overhead, I was surprised and not a little excited to see the first few snowflakes begin to tumble erratically from…from the stars. This wasn’t right; there were no clouds overhead and no snow had been forecast. Everyone knew that it didn’t really snow at Christmas anymore. And the band played on.

    I caught sight of an empty bench opposite the nearby pub and while both were tempting, I decided I would be better served spending a few minutes sitting outside watching the general hubbub pass me by than battling my way to a crowded bar. Besides, the two pints that I’d had earlier probably hadn’t worked their way out of my system yet and with the drive home awaiting, I was very much of the opinion that fate could manage very well without me doing anything to piss it off at the moment. Lowering myself onto the cold, metal seat, I piled my bags up beside me in a bid to ward off any randomers who might decide that they wanted to stop by for a chat. I mean, I’ll talk to most people, but right now, what I really wanted was…time. Backwards in time…

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

  • Love Wars

    So, that day, that memory that I alluded to earlier. If I were telling it as a story, I might imply that it started like any other day. Indeed, it may well have done so. On this particular day, however, there was mystery afoot, a plot bubbling beneath the surface of our working-class existence in suburban Teignmouth. I was blissfully oblivious, even when dragging my suitcase down the hill of Kingsway and huddling in a shrouded, leafy enclave with my mother and sisters as we waited for something, someone who was destined to take us away from home. I was probably told that we were going on an adventure, which would have appealed to my mind and made the reality far more exciting than it actually was.

    Like any good escape in the movies, there always seems to be an element of luck involved, a roll of fate’s dice that will determine the outcome. If anyone had visions of ‘Little Me’ wandering around the garden discreetly depositing soil from Tom, Dick or Harry tunnel over the flowerbeds, I’m afraid you’ll be somewhat disappointed by what follows. No forged papers, no disguises…not even a cameo appearance by Steve McQueen or James Garner.

    As our bid for freedom unfolded, it transpired that somehow, my father had got wind of what had happened, perhaps a tip off from an overly zealous neighbour and pulled up alongside us in a white car, driven by a man we knew as Uncle Don, whose surname escapes me, but I think I recall that he was a decent man. And so, temporarily abandoned by fortune, we trooped back up the hill, a dark and oppressive cloud hanging over us all, although I still didn’t really understand what was going on. I spent the rest of the afternoon in a similarly confused state as whispers were whispered and arguments were, well, argued. Our social worker arrived, a chap called Mr Day, who wore a brown suit and was accompanied by the smell of stale cigarette smoke and coffee, an odour to epitomize the seventies. He also spoke…very…slowly…which amused us children no end and we would regularly mimic his voice after his visits. To be fair, I’ve never envied social workers their jobs and our family, such as it was, must have been a challenge to work with.

    This image shows me with my four sisters sat on a Witch's Hat roundabout in a park in Teignmouth
    The only photograph I have with all of my sisters in it. I was obviously a fashion icon even back then.

    I don’t know what the girls were all thinking while these surreptitious conversations were taking place, but I remember suddenly feeling that something definite, something huge and scary was happening, that we were all moving towards a place from which there would be no return. I don’t recall the effects that living in such a disjointed, dysfunctional family unit had on my sisters at the time, but if the rock-throwing incident was anything to go by from my perspective, it must have had an equally profound effect on them. With age and experience on my side, I can look back now and understand how the ever-present threat of violence taught me to rely on my instincts, taught me to watch for signs in people’s behaviour, even at the relatively tender age of what, six years old? It’s something that I’ve never really stopped doing and has doubtless contributed to my tendency to overthink social situations at the age of 52. It’s also likely that it’s where my glass-half-empty outlook emanates from, so much so that it long ago became far worse than a glass half-empty as my glass is chipped, cracked, dirty and filled with a liquid that is frankly undrinkable.

    Anyway, back to those whispered exchanges and the air of despondency so thick that it clouded the entire house like a blanket of depressing fog. Eventually, we were all called into the kitchen and the situation was explained in its simplest terms. Mum and Dad weren’t going to be living together anymore. So, we had to choose, there and then, who we wanted to live with. It still hurts me now when I think about it. I remember that I was the last to decide and that afternoon in the dingy, little kitchen, where I had broken my toes and where my youngest sister, Ellie, had once fed the dog (Sheba, an Alsatian) an entire box of Weetabix, all the milk we had and a bowlful of sugar for its breakfast, is burned into my mind. One by one, my sisters crossed the kitchen floor under the watchful eye of all concerned to stand next to my mother. I didn’t know what to do, but I looked at my father and I saw a broken man. Now, that’s not to say that I didn’t or don’t sympathise with what my mother went through; in fact, I’ll come to that later. But in that moment, I saw beyond the aggression and the violence, through the anger and the arrogance and I knew that I couldn’t let him be on his own. Call it a hunch, call it instinct, maybe even a sixth sense. Years later, he admitted to me that had I made a different choice that day, then he wouldn’t have lived the life that he did. You may think that my choice in that darkest of moments might have earned me some sort of reprieve or favoured treatment. Unfortunately, I don’t think the Universe works that way.

    After that day in the kitchen, my memories of our timeline become a little blurred. There were so many comings and goings and I have memories of when the girls were there and when they were not, even after they all left, I think they came back. There were bitter custody battles to rival the notorious Kramer vs Kramer movie and if you wonder about the level of the physical harm in the relationship between my parents, in my opinion, it was nothing compared to what went on after they separated. My father drank more and his behaviour became more volatile, his frustrations bubbling ever nearer to the surface, probably fuelled by his feelings of inadequacy and failure. In the absence of my mother, it doesn’t take a genius to work out where his frustrations landed.

    The custody battles and the subsequent behaviour surrounding them are still what hurt the most to this day. One Christmas, we were told that we (myself and any combination of the girls, so frequent were the changes in personnel at home in both Teignmouth and latterly Ideford that I can’t recall exactly who was involved) couldn’t see our mother because she had died. Take a moment, because I know that I probably seem a little blasé in dropping that into the narrative. But how fucked up would you have to be to consider that as an appropriate lie to tell your children? To make them grieve for their mother in the knowledge that what you had told them was untrue. Of course, I now know how fucked up he had to be to even consider that and I understand that he suffered a traumatic childhood himself. That doesn’t and never will excuse some of his actions around this time, but it does explain it and I’m far more at home with understanding why somebody did what they did when the alternative is much more concerning to me.

    Similarly, I can remember being marched down to the phone box in Ideford to call my mother and tell her that I didn’t want to come and spend Christmas with her. No reason given, I was just told to say that I didn’t want to. As you can probably guess, it was the very opposite of what I wanted to do, but I didn’t have any say in the matter. So much of my childhood was spent obeying the command to ‘do as I was told’ or to ‘do as I say, not as I do’. The short walk back past the Royal Oak pub was a great deal colder than the December air could ever have made it with the numb, frozen heart that I carried chilling me to the bone.

    At some point, those custody battles ceased to have anything to do with the welfare of the children and, in my admittedly inexperienced opinion, became more about point-scoring and hurting the adults who were involved. Any semblance of family, any possibility that we siblings could have had of living a normal life and conducting anything approaching balanced relationships with each other was torn away from us during those days and the months that followed. To my frustration, no-one has ever really accepted responsibility for the pain that was inflicted upon us during these times and I’ll try to explore the impact that it had on us further in these pages.

    In many ways, I was more fortunate than my sisters, who, over the course of time, ended up in care homes as the impact of their situation and the damage determined by others affected their behaviour and their relationships. For whatever reason, despite my father’s drinking and the physical violence, we got by, we survived. Just. And when I say just, I don’t say it lightly. There were times when food was in such short supply that we would have to get by on a tin of spaghetti for a whole weekend. It sounds laughable, doesn’t it? But laughter was in short supply. One terrible night in particular stands out…

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

  • Wherever You Will Go

    If you find the dogs are crying in the morning

    If the piano plays a song while you’re asleep

    If the days we had repeat while you are dreaming

    It’s the echo of a heart you couldn’t keep

    If the cat should settle where I used to whisper

    If the snow should fail to lie where I once walked

    If my favourite book lies open on the table

    It’s the echo of the times when we once talked

    If the music that I loved continues playing

    If my old shadow walks the cobbles of this town

    If the roses wilt and wither in the winter

    It’s the echo of our days upon your frown

    If you find the tears are falling far too freely

    If you track my laughter ‘cross our years and years

    If perfume and tobacco tease your senses

    It’s the echo of our fantasies and fears

    If the wind should feel much colder on my birthday

    If the sun should fail to shine when days were ours

    If the fire should fail to warm and heal your broken heart

    It’s the echo of our time beneath these stars.

    This was written in October 2025 and was originally a poem that I wrote back in the late nineties after my aunt, Margaret, had passed away. I reviewed the original and was unhappy with the general tone, so I chose to rework a large chunk of it and I’m much happier with it now. The later version was also heavily influenced by the loss of my mother-in-law, Carol, in November 2024.

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

  • Cover From the Sky

    The small village of Poundsgate is situated on Dartmoor and has quite the reputation. It is to be found on the road between Ashburton and Princetown and at the very least is thought to date back to the 13th century, when it was arguably little more than a cluster of farms and cottages surrounding the Tavistock Inn. The village was once said to have been visited by the devil, way back in 1638, but that is another story for another time for someone else to tell. But if you are so inclined, it’s at the very least worth a few minutes of your time.

    This story, however, is a much smaller and simpler affair. Details may be vague and a little florid and it’s probably a taste of things to come. But in a time of anguish and constant turmoil, this was a moment in my life that has forever stayed with me and ingrained a woman who I barely knew into my heart.

    My father didn’t talk much about his family when I was growing up. I recall a long journey and a short holiday up to Durham to see his mother, Annie and his sister, Carol and her family, but the trip was unremarkable, certainly in comparison to other memories that I can recall, and very little has stayed with me over the years. I wish that I could recall more, or at the very least, imagine some happy reminisces from the trip. I spoke to Carol years later after my father passed away, but our contact was fleeting and I learned that both she and her husband, Brian, passed not long after.

    There was no talk of my paternal grandfather, also Thomas Hepburn, and as I grew older, I understood why (to be discussed in a future post) and my father’s struggles began to make a lot of sense. His own grandfather was a violent man and he suffered at his hands during a childhood that probably mirrored my own in many ways.

    However, the one member of his family that did occasionally warrant a mention was his sister, Margaret, who lived on a farm in Poundsgate. She had horses, I think, as well as numerous cats and dogs and I recall an enormous Alsatian who was almost twice as big as I was during this visit. If I were to describe Margaret to you, I would say that she was larger than life, a looming woman whose vastness of bosom hinted at a heart full of love beating beneath. Her house was cluttered but warm and inviting and she would welcome us with a booming, husky voice and a twinkle in her eye. Her hair was a very light brown and it always seemed to be engaged in a constant battle with time, struggling to keep the greyness at bay. I think that she may also have been a smoker, which in my head suggests that the greyness she battled against may well have been imbued with the smell of tobacco. Regardless of such detail, which my fallible memory may be recalling incorrectly, she was a fine woman who I admired greatly in silence.

    In her lounge, there was a piano, which I’m reliably informed Margaret played and taught with a passion and ability that has remained unmatched within our family ever since. I often got the feeling that she would have liked to have known us better, to have enjoyed a stronger affinity with my father. Now that I’m older, with an occasional pining for impossible relationships myself, I understand that circumstances can often make those wishes unachievable.

    So, on this particular day of this particular visit, I was in the doghouse. Not literally, for the gargantuan canine inhabitant of Margaret’s house lived in a kennel outside in a courtyard that was more often than not littered with shit. No, I would have done something wrong or something that I wasn’t supposed to do, probably based on social niceties that I had no idea about relating to the somewhat Victorian view that children should be seen and not heard. Knowing me, I was probably tempted by the piano and maybe snuck a little tickle of the ivories that would have resulted in neither tune nor melody but likely raucous chaos. And that would have infuriated my father to the point where if I hadn’t received at the very least a clip around the ear, I would have been promised one later in the day and that promise would have been very much followed up on. Margaret either saw this exchange or she sensed it; such is the esteem in which I hold this woman that I wouldn’t put anything past her. However it caught her attention is largely irrelevant because what matters the most is that she was kind to me. I’m sure she saw my father for what he was in that moment and in all likelihood, she saw history repeating itself. I wonder if this was the first moment where I understood that kindness mattered more than anything else, that I didn’t have to walk in the violent and aggressive footsteps of those who had gone before me.

    I would have still received the inevitable rebuke to alert me to the consequences of my actions, but the kindness from Margaret, the softness of her voice and the tenderness of her embrace gave younger me some hope for the future and when you are downtrodden or trapped in hell, that can be the greatest gift of all.

    I never forgot that day and many years later, when we visited Margaret as she neared her end of days, I had the opportunity to tell her. And once again, she hugged me to her chest, a grown man still full of those doubts and insecurities and she told me that I was a good person, that there was still hope for the future, even when she had none.

    Sometimes we meet remarkable people and we don’t know it at the time. I wish that I had known her better and I hope that she knew of the difference that she made to my life. I think of her often and am always grateful.

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

  • Life in Technicolor

    We are born from darkness. A darkness that is warm and protective and we emerge from the shadows to a world that is new to our senses. Sounds retain elements of familiarity, voices that we have heard from within our protective cocoon, while the reassurance of the first touch of our mother’s hand prompts a flurry of previously unknown activity and we experience smells and tastes for the first time. Light filters through our clouded vision, unidentifiable shapes that bring the first experience of ‘outside’ into our tiny world that never stops expanding from that moment. In an instant, we are more fragile, more vulnerable than we have ever been, a creation filled with love and hope and the best of intentions. We are beauty, we are innocence. We are perfection, unspoiled by reality. Our purity is fleeting, slipping away with every sound that we hear and every moment that we live from this first minute, our future shaped by unseen hands and unspoken words.

    We take those tentative, shallow breaths, oblivious to our place in the universe. We now exist trapped between two moments, our first and our last, barely aware of what it means to be alive and oblivious to the end and our distance from it.

    Everything happens.

    Sounds and smells retain elements of familiarity, voices that we have known that have become part of our protective cocoon. Light filters through our clouded vision, barely identifiable shapes bringing the final experience of ‘outside’ into our enormous world that never stops diminishing from that moment. In an instant, we are once again fragile, more vulnerable than we have ever been, a creation filled with love yet without hope, eroded by the intentions of others. We are beauty, we are guilt, laden with our shattered dreams and hopes that never were, carrying the time that we wasted with the hearts that we broke and those who broke ours. Our impurity is permanent, cloaking us as we slip away with every sound we have heard and every moment that we lived to this final minute, our past shaped by the hands of those we knew and the words we came to be known by.

          We take those tentative, shallow breaths, afraid of our place in the universe. We existed, trapped between two moments, our first and our last, painfully aware of what it meant to be alive, aware of the end and our distance from it. The darkness arrives and some of us head willingly towards it, while others rage against the inevitable, clinging to the surface of a cruel world that teased us with a myriad of dreams and possibilities, some just a heartbeat away and some as distant and unreachable as the edge of the universe. It is a darkness that is cold and fearful, accompanied by the shadows of who we were and the things that we did in a world that is new to our senses. It is, we are told, the way of things.

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

  • 20th Century Boy

     I was born on October 29th, 1973, in the city of Exeter. Wait, that’s weird, writing in the first person. Still, I digress. You may need to get used to that.

    Where was I? Ah, 1973. David Bowie was tearing up the charts, while the unremarkable ‘Daydreamer’ by David Cassidy occupied the top spot during the week of my arrival (David Cassidy fans need not get in touch to disagree).  Sunderland had shocked Leeds United in the FA Cup Final in May, much to my father’s delight, Roger Moore’s first Bond film was released (Live and Let Die) and Pizza Hut opened its first restaurant in the UK in Islington. Two IRA bombs went off in London in March, killing one person and injuring 250. Women were admitted to the London Stock Exchange for the first time and JRR Tolkien passed away.

    Three minutes to one in the morning was my official time of birth (as pictured below), narrowly missing October 28th, an occurrence which would have impacted nobody at all in any meaningful way. Born to parents (yes, I know it’s supposed to say ‘loving’, but more on that later), Rosemary Letitia and Thomas Southern Hepburn into a family of three sisters (Carole, Alison and Rachael). My parents had previously lost a son, Andrew, so I suppose in some ways my arrival was a blessing. However, theirs was a tumultuous relationship. I have no idea when the cracks started to appear, but I suspect that by the time my younger sister Ellie burst onto the scene almost two years later, there was definitely more than a hint of all not being well with the Hepburns of 178 Kingsway, Teignmouth.

    Wikipedia, that occasionally reliable repository of fact and fiction, tells me that Teignmouth is a seaside town, fishing port and civil parish in the English county of Devon on the north bank of the estuary mouth of the River Teign. From the 1800s onwards, the town grew rapidly in size from a fishing port associated with the Newfoundland cod industry to a fashionable resort of some note in Georgian times. The port still operates and the town remains a popular seaside holiday location. To me, it’s always felt like a town that can’t quite make its mind up as to what it wants to be. I have no quarrel with that, indeed I find it quite endearing. While my earliest experiences of the town were traumatic, I have since returned to establish a new narrative and it’s one of my favourite places to spend time these days. In 1818, Keats completed his epic poem, Endymion, in the town, which begins with the line; ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’. Triple jump world record holder, Jonathan Edwards, also lived in Teignmouth in his early years and attended Inverteign Juniors school.

    For obvious developmental reasons, memories of my early days are sparse to say the least. Dad was working as a nurse; I have a vague recollection of Starcross, a small village between Teignmouth and Exeter, being mentioned as a place of work. I would imagine that Mum was very much a full-time mother with five of us to parent and with no in-laws to help, it must have been hard work. Our house, to partially quote the Madness song, was part of a row of terraced houses opposite flats that to a young and imaginative mind were accessed by a glorious and slightly precarious-looking bridge at the far side of the narrow road. The reality, when I returned several years later, was very different!

    Of course, during those early years, I had no idea about social status and council estates, but we certainly weren’t in the most affluent area of the town. We lived a very short walk from the nearest school, the aforementioned Inverteign Junior School, where the fearsome Mr Last ruled with an iron grip, a man whom I had the misfortune of crossing on just the one occasion. The ‘once’ was more than enough and the resultant lecture and subsequent threat of the cane, only deferred because my reputation (or at least that of my familial circumstances) preceded me, had me managing my own behaviour ultra-cautiously from that point on.

    My parents argued and as I grew older, I discovered that those arguments were often punctuated by acts of physical violence. At some point, before, during or after, perhaps all three, this spilled over into the family. Dad was very much the disciplinarian and coupled with a short temper, a lot of time was spent treading on eggshells. Despite this spectre looming over the family, there were brief moments of…I hesitate to call them happiness, but perhaps calm would be more apposite. Relative calm at least.

    My earliest memory takes me back to a Christmas Eve, perhaps 1978, in the kitchen with mince pies and sausage rolls under preparation and the air filled with magic and the hope of better days. There was I, in my pyjamas, rocking merrily back and forward on a long, wooden bench adjacent to the kitchen table, upon which my elbows were comfortably resting as I continued to enthusiastically enjoy the sound that the bench was making on the cold, kitchen floor. Having already been warned that what I was doing had more than an element of danger to it, it will of course be of no surprise to anyone that the bench tipped over, managing to land on all of my toes, breaking them in the process and necessitating a trip to the local A&E department. By all accounts, this wasn’t my first emergency visit to the hospital either, as I had previously had my hands run over by a go-kart, which had broken my knuckles as it sped off over the aforementioned bridge to the flats, leaving me wailing in its wake, the kart’s dastardly driver remaining unknown to all and sundry. Rumours of a sniggering dog in the kart have never been verified (I’m afraid you’ll have to be of a certain age to understand that cultural reference!).

     Living in an environment where we were regularly exposed to violence was bound to have an effect. I will say here that there were reasons behind my father’s behaviour and I will discuss these in detail later. I won’t excuse what went on and neither will I make light of it, but what I will say is that all behaviour is communication and I believe that later in his life, he found another way to express himself and went some way towards achieving the healing that he so desperately needed. For me, the effect of living in that environment reached crisis point quickly. I don’t know how old I was, five maybe, but to the best of my knowledge, there had been a falling out between one or more of my sisters and a girl from the flats. It would seem that I was a protective younger brother as I acted impulsively at the sight of my upset siblings and to my shame, I picked up a rock and threw it at the girl in question. Possessing a decent throw for someone of such tender years, my aim was unfortunately far better than I had intended, the missile hitting my target in the head and precipitating a scene resembling Carrie at the Prom. I can speak with reasonable certainty when I say that I suspect my actions that day earned me a hiding and it’s not something that I look back on with anything other than disappointment and ignominy.

    Time moved inexorably on, the house itself took on a starring role in our lives (to be discussed in future posts) and the situation deteriorated with alarming rapidity. Whether or not my memory of the timeline is correct remains to be seen, but I am reasonably confident in stating that Mum left at one point and moved, at the very least, me with her to Sussex, leading to a brief spell at the unimaginatively named Colgate Primary School before returning to Teignmouth. I guess that a reconciliation with my father was attempted before she left again, a much more vivid memory for me that I will come to shortly, simply because it led to one of the most painful days of my life that is forever etched in my mind. Essentially, however, this was my beginning. I’m not going to lie; I think it could have gone better.

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

  • Just a Few Things That I Ain’t – An Introduction

    ‘People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,’ said David Tennant’s Doctor Who in the episode Blink. ‘But actually,’ he continues, ‘from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…stuff.’

    I could probably have chosen one from any number of quotes or song lyrics to open with and most of them would probably have been appropriate. I love beginnings. They can be tricky beasts but they are exciting and fresh and full of hope. Endings are much harder and in truth, I try to avoid them whenever possible because they often hurt. I rarely know what to say at the start (which is often what makes it the exciting bit) and I always have too much to say at the end, but for the next however-many-articles I’ll let you be the judge of that and hopefully you’ll find the beginning, the middle and the end entertaining, enlightening, amusing and inevitably, a little bit sad. I used to think that sadness was all that I was entitled to, but I’m very pleased to say that’s not the case these days. Mostly.

    Who am I? (Not a direct quote from the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie starring Paul McGann – apologies here and now if you’re not particularly enamoured of the following: the aforementioned fictional Time Lord, cricket, Plymouth Argyle and football in general, the fabulous sitcom Bottom, the songs of Paul Heaton and various other singer/songwriters/performers scattered liberally within these pages). More often than not, I’m nobody important, but occasionally, when the stars align, I am something to somebody and sometimes I think that’s the best that I can hope for. I can already hear at least five dissenting voices and I’ll take that as a fifty-two-year-old father of three who is socially awkward and laden down with enough emotional baggage to fill the hold of Concorde. Perhaps ‘Who have I been?’ would be a more apposite question.

    Well, in approximate linear terms, as a progression of cause to effect, I’ve been a lonely and battered child, a victim of abuse. I’ve been an average footballer, a failed student with a propensity for inadvertently finding trouble, a comedian (briefly), a private detective (even more briefly), a songwriter, a lover and a broken-hearted fool. I’ve been a shop boy, a bastard, homeless and a broken-hearted fool again. I’ve been an arsehole, a husband, braver than I’ve ever had to be, a gullible, broken-hearted fool, suicidal, a shop manager, an average cricketer, even braver than the time before when I was braver than I’ve ever had to be, an inexperienced father and a husband again. I’ve been a mobile phone salesman, a slightly more experienced father, a slightly less average cricketer, a father for the third time, a wedding photographer, a cricket coach, an argumentative and opinionated cricket coach, broken-hearted once again, a reluctant hero, a complicated, prickly so-and-so and a writer. And in the words of the lyrical genius that is Paul Heaton, ‘I’ve been bad man, sad man, certified mad but never 007 or Saint. Trendsetter, go-getter, international jetsetter, just a few things that I ain’t.’ I’ve probably missed a few out, certainly the broken-hearted parts, but for an ordinary person in an ordinary world, that feels like quite a lot. I wonder what’s left. Hopefully a bit less of the broken-hearted and a few new experiences to add to that list. Success of some sort would be nice too, but I often think that’s for others to measure. Ultimately, I would like to leave a positive footprint on this Earth before I disappear on my awfully big adventure.

    A blog like this inevitably prompts the question ‘why’? Why has an ordinary bloke written a blog about his ordinary life? Well, in all honesty, I’m not sure that it has been ordinary. This was going to be a book, but I felt that this was a better way of sharing my story. Look at all of those things I’ve been, flick through these pages and draw your own conclusions. Of course, I’m not going to publish everything all at once, where’s the fun in that? Besides, I’ve always loved a good cliffhanger! So, instead, I’ll be adding frequent updates. I’ve got a particularly lovely short-ish Christmas story coming up as it’s that time of year. There are plenty of stories and reminisces already written and I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Also, it’s only fair to warn any readers that there will be times when this blog is not for the faint-hearted and I will try to give warnings where possible. It might be a tough read but it’s been even tougher living it and it’s only recently that I’ve accepted that I’m what’s commonly known today as a survivor. It will become obvious why.

    For some reason, I’m one of those people who things happen to. And all I’ve ever wanted is ‘a life more ordinary’. However, I long ago concluded that I’m not meant to have that, no matter how much I pine for it. I’m too opinionated, I’m too scarred by my past and I’m too bloody-minded not to stand up for what I believe in. I know I’m not perfect (Was it Something I Said – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), but I never strove for perfection, just to be the best version of myself that I could be. There have been times when I’ve been anything but that and I think I’m still trying to find out who that is, but I’m closer to it now than I have ever been. Sometimes I’ve had to be someone I’m not and sometimes I’ve had to be someone I didn’t want to be, but we all wear different hats from time to time; some fit well and suit us. Others don’t.

    I’ve tried to assemble these reminisces in a reasonably linear format, but as those of you who know me will be aware, there is a tendency to disappear off on tangents! I’ve also tried to change things up a little and have included poems and short stories that I’ve written that I feel are relevant to everything within these pages. Breaking things down into shorter essays should also make it easier to dip in and out of the overall narrative – something I’m trying to take into other areas of my writing. If there’s something that you like, feel free to comment. If you have questions, feel free to ask. I’m not telling this story to vilify anyone but it is my truth about my life and some people don’t come out of this smelling of roses. I’ve tried to be fair in my recollections, even when it’s perhaps not warranted and more than that, I have always tried to understand why some people did the things that they did. Some of those people are no longer with us but they are fondly remembered despite the bad times. Inevitably, it’s only one side of my story and I’m sure that other versions are available. But not here.

    One other thing. I don’t generally like photos of myself. It’s taken a bit of courage to include one here, albeit with one of our many animals! Yes, my beard really is that grey and I’m afraid I really do have that many chins, but I’m trying to work on it.

    So, this is me. And in the words of Paul Heaton once again:

    ‘This is my life and this is how it reads’ (My Book – The Beautiful South).

    Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.

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