The swinging 60’s suddenly stopped swinging as I gazed down at my mother’s body, lying there on the couch where I had placed her. My heart and mind had shouted my challenge to the Almighty but I quietly stepped back and let the carers take over. My father, meanwhile, returned home from work to find this awful emergency and accompanied my mother as she was taken to the Blue Sisters’ hospital in Sliema. At the hospital I and all the family waited, and waited, and waited but the doctors could not assure us that she was even going to survive. Weeks went by and slowly, slowly, the doctors gave us more hope.
My father spent most of his free time by her bedside at the hospital and I entered the strange ‘limbo’ of an arrested life. I had no wish to leave Malta with things in such a ‘suspended’ state. I needed time to think, adjust; to figure out where I stood. That shout at God was more than words, somewhere in my spirit, I knew it was a ‘pact’ that I dare not ignore or take lightly.
I waited in Malta for about seven or eight months till my mother had left the hospital and was safe at home. She had fully recovered her general health but her movement down one side was severely restricted. She and dad were now much closer and they spent most of their time together. I remember her following one of the church processions, walking with the aid of a stick behind the statue and saying the rosary with the others. I watched, noted and stayed very quiet. I did not join her but I did know that God had answered my prayer. I also knew that I had no idea how ‘to believe in Him’ even though I had promised to do just that. For now, I left it somewhere at the back of my mind and got back to living my life with a little less regret.
In late summer 1962, with things at home beginning to settle down, I returned to London and immediately enrolled in an Advertising course at the British Tutorial Institute.
I was living in Kensington Court, and happy to be studying for something new. I applied for a post in an advertising agency in Berger House, Berkley Square. J.Walter Thompson was regarded as one of the top agencies world-wide. I always went for ‘the biggest and the best’. When I was about to go for the interview, my friend Roland Flamini turned up and was impressed by the fact that I was attempting to plunge in at the deep end in my new choice of career. “I think I’ll come with you,” he said confidently. “You don’t know how to sell yourself.” Roland was a writer and journalist and was far more experienced in these matters than I. However, I was in two minds about this. I thought, “this could make me look stupid”. He came along anyway and spent the first ten minutes singing my praises to the interviewer, Valerie Kennedy Browne, and then scooted off and left me to it. Something worked, I secured the job and started immediately in the TV time buying department working for Peter Rennie.
The 60’s were about to start swinging again but the seed of faith had indeed germinated and began to start a ‘swing’ of its own.