Prélude
A few years ago, my wife Danielle and I read a work of fiction written by Agatha Christie: "And Then There Were None". The novel began with "Ten" live persons and proceeded on to the elimination of each and every one until "There Were None". The reader is left in the dark as to the identity of the culprit until the very end of the book.
We thought it might be interesting to invert the process in "And Then There Were Ten". The story would be real rather than fiction. The story would start two who would become one and eventually the plot would increase in number until there were ten. The culprits would be identified in the first chapter.
But seriously, when I was a college student and a dreamy-eyed adolescent. I had answers for everything. I was full of self-confidence and ready to face life’s challengesé I felt an urge to change the world according to my views rather than to adapt to the prevailing worldviews. As a young adult, I left many vagaries behind but kept those persuasions I felt better fitted to my capacities. Yet, I dared not expound them too forcefully as I expected the normal retort: "You don't know what you are talking about. You'll see, as the years go by, that reality isn't what you fancy it to be."
Now that I am a member of the mature adult class and about to start downhill into an age where I'll naturally be termed dotty, I figure this is the time to lay down some facts my companion in life and I have more or less managed to live out: not dreams, not persuasions, not a philosophy, simply facts.
I expect to be told: "Of course, its easy to give forth your ideas when they are simply the expression of what you have done."
There is no way out save to set forth the rules of the game:
1- Herein the reader will find facts made up of actions, of feelings and of opinions. All were facts. These actions, feelings and opinions may be deemed absurd, odd, ordinary or pleasing; they may be considered healthy or pathological; they may confirm or weaken judgements, statistics or philosophies; they may be right or wrong, indefensible, commendable or simply boring. They were facts.
2- Needless to add, though we do so, certain names have been altered in order to protect the privacy of the persons concerned.
3- All the persons herein have been presented through the looking-glass of our own persuasions, prejudices and experience and must therefore be regarded as facts relative to a very particular and subjective view-point. We may have misjudged others on occasions as we have even noticed misjudging ourselves at times. But even these judgements are facts and have been reported herein as such. — I am especially grateful for my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, whom I have not always fully appreciated. The reader will recognise how virtuously they have endured my antics.
4- Finally, though the following book has been entirely written by and is far too much preoccupied with myself, I must insist that I strove to be more a biographer than an autobiographer. The living soul that animates our facts is my wife Danielle... who has not been at liberty to be a writer as she is the doer.
Georges Allaire.
