Be Lucky!

There are some books that cry out to be written. "Be Lucky!" is one of them. An autobiographical narrative, it tells of the lives of the author and his father Ted, spanning pre-war London and the fifties and sixties to the present. Beginning with Ted Jerrard and his poor working-class upbringing, it goes on to describe his hair-raising experiences in the 1st Airlanding Brigade during World War II and his subsequent struggle with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. As his son, the author felt compelled to write this book after Ted's death as a means of coming to terms with the effects of PTSD on the family. Inspired by a phantom encounter with Ted, the author begins a series of letters to his dead father which, interwoven with straight narrative, trace the moving story of the relations between father and son through the decades. Ted's battle against a strong temptation to join his brother Ricky in a lucrative criminal career is paralleled in his son's struggle to become a writer. Both are driven to make their dreams come true. Originating in the books and writers he admires, the author's dreams drive him on through a restless and improvident life. Gradually, his fears of failure and sense of life's incoherence increase until he reaches a point of despair. He is saved, however, by the hallucinatory meeting with his father, which spurs him to write this rich and engrossing narrative, full of interesting observations on people and the places he lived in. Married and divorced twice, the author enlivens the story by recounting his boyhood adventures with the bold girls of Battersea, south London, and his adult relationships with women. A tough street life, boozy family parties (attended occasionally by London criminals), schoolmates, pet animals, boxing matches, girlfriends and wives - all are involved in his odyssey to discover what he calls the "secret of living". Behind it all is the ghostly presence of his father, who he talks to in attempts to understand and so hopefully forgive past wrongs. His attempts finally succeed, and his hopes are fulfilled.