At last! After three years of sifting, transcribing, editing and translating my father-in-law’s memoirs are available through Kindle and Amazon in both Spanish and English.
I have previously commented on the emotional challenge with which I was unexpectedly confronted, which I hadn’t even imagined before I took on the task, and which I think will always remain with me. But had I ever given a thought to the sheer amount of work involved, I might never have plunged into it.
I discovered that my father-in-law had done a good deal of rewriting. Just trying to make sense of the page numbering was a major task, especially when there were great gaps between one section and another and whose missing content later turned up with totally different page numbering somewhere else.
The inconsistent use of commas and full stops was a challenge in themselves, let alone the handwriting where certain letters were indecipherable and yet could change the meaning of a sentence if I got them wrong. I confess that I occasionally cut out a sentence when I couldn’t confidently ascertain its meaning.
But now the mammoth task is over. I’ve done my best to honour my father-in-law’s memory and make it possible for his grandchildren and their children to know him as I never knew him in life.
The other several hundred pages, including his memoirs of a taxi-driver which I’m certain would make fascinating reading but which I don’t have the energy to tackle, I leave to one of his granddaughters.
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