This is a sample Afterbook. The people and events are fictional, made to show what yours could look like.
Create your own
3 October 1958, still writing · Bristol
"I've been lucky. I'd like it written down before I forget which bits."
17
memories
0
candles
David is writing his own Afterbook, a decade at a time. Merchant navy engineer for twenty years, then a college lecturer, then the man who fixes the boats at Bristol Marina for beer money. This is a life still being written.
Written by David himself, with photos from his sister Grace
3 October 1958
Dad had come from Lagos in 1955 to study engineering; Mum was from Bedminster and never left. I got his patience and her accent.
September 1963
I remember the smell of the floor polish and nothing else.
1966
Which you were not supposed to do. My cousin Leroy pushed me in off the Clifton bank and I came up swimming.
1970s
Dad took me on the bus from 1970 until I left. We saw them win nothing for a decade and loved every minute.
14 July 1975
Sixteen, a tin trunk, and a ship called the Avonmouth Trader that leaked oil from every joint.
March 1978
Met my grandmother for the first time. She held my face in her hands for a full minute and said I had my father's forehead.
1981 to 1983
Two years of tankers, heat, and learning what a turbine sounds like just before it goes.
24 November 1984
Between voyages. I had eleven days ashore and we used nine of them.
19 May 1987
I was in Singapore. I got the telegram at four in the morning and woke the whole ship.
1990 to 1995
The best ship I ever served on and the best crew. We ran the Rotterdam route for five years and I knew every rivet.
August 1996
Ruth was nine and I'd missed too much. Took the job at Bristol Marina the same month.
September 1999
Terrified for the first term. By the second I'd found out that if you tell the truth about what goes wrong at sea, students listen.
April 2005
Two hundred people. The Thornbury Athletic chairman came. Dad would have said it was a bit much.
July 2012
Eight months, one original manual, and a lot of guesswork. She still runs.
3 October 2018
Sandra organised it and told me it was a quiet dinner. It was not a quiet dinner.
June 2021
Kept the marina job. Kept the tin trunk too.
September 2024
Grace found Dad's photographs in a biscuit tin. That was the push.
