The Promise Tree

'Si Texen', a pen name, is English, born in Luton, Beds. Fatherless by the age of three. Outdoor country childhood. Brought up mainly by older sister and aged grandmother (born 1865.) Mother mostly out at work. Solitary child, but for sister. Started telling myself bedtime stories for entertainment from about the age of five, extending stories for weeks, sometimes months. Pretty well unteachable at school. Hated English. Homeless and familyless by the age of twelve: sister and grandmother died; mother had nervous breakdown. County boarding school from the age of twelve to fifteen, for boys and girls with difficulties similar to mine. There, a teacher decided it was a waste of time trying to teach my form English so read to us, I now realise cleverly, 'The War of the Worlds,' taking one whole term to do so, after which I taught myself to read with 'The Call of the Wild' by Jack London, my first book. Married at twenty-two. Paid for and sent myself to art college in my twenties. Completed a five year photographic course. Became a studio manager in London. Single parent to a two year old daughter at thirty-four, when I also married for a second time to model girlfriend, then twenty, who is still my wife. I am now only really interested in photographing wild flowers and the female nude. It may be said I am probably still in the woods with my sister. 'The Promise Tree' could not have been written without the hundreds of hours of freezing work on the language conundrums which my wife and I struggled through together, in France, for Book Two. Her efforts and contributions have been extraordinary. I don't often get on with men but do sometimes form lasting friendships with my female models. I like good manners, no neighbours, rock'n'roll music, good quality almost anything and, the impossible dream, people I can trust.