May 14-17 took me and daughter Sachi back to my Mum’s house in a small village called Gunness, nearby a small town called Scunthorpe in the north east Midlands.

Its where I was born and grew up.  No need to say much about a town that had one third of its population of 70,000 working in three different steel works at the time I left school in 1967. It was the UK’s biggest steel processing center, euphemistically called the “Industrial Garden Town”.

I had a couple of years working in the bowels of hell before I got wise and quit. That’s a story in itself. Let’s just say that I was glad to get out at the age of 20 with a “10 pounds Pom” free ticket to Australia.

Mum has lived in the same house since about 1947. Two of my brothers, Alan and Gary, and my sister Linda live in close proximity and my eldest brother Brian lives in Wales. Linda is at least a vegetarian and has some belief in the soul and reincarnation.

Mum’s a good soul, has a deep and abiding faith in God. She always says ‘Hare Krishna’ whenever I ring, and is really very happy that I became a devotee.

Mum is old now, 87, and getting frail. She’s lived by her self since 1986 when my Dad died and has been pretty independent and self-sufficient since then. However this year she has started to struggle to maintain herself. Her body is riddled with arthritis which makes it painful to even sit down, what to speak of walk around. She spends most of her time in a reclining chair and hadn’t been out of the house since Christmas.

Time is upon us all, and we feel it not more so than in the deterioration of these bodies. Mum has a picture of her wedding day in 1943 up on the wall, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast.

There go I.

While I was there I took the opportunity to visit my old school friend Chris Hall, whom readers of this blog will perhaps remember was one of the two friends I emigrated to Australia with in 1971. I posted a picture of him taken on the night I shaved my head and committed myself to Srila Prabhupada’s service on Feb. 14 1972.

He returned to Scunny and still works at the steel works as a metalurgist. We remain good friends although his spiritual inclinations are about nil. At least he appreciates my choice, and knows it was made after serious and deep search. He does love prasadam, so that’s a plus.

I went with Sachi to visit Alan, the second oldest brother. He’s retired and lives in another small village the other side of Scunny. We had a pleasant couple of hours together and finally he got round to asking me a question he had always meant to ask but never got round to. “So what made you join the Hare Krishna’s?”

Better late than never. After 38 years he finally expressed his curiosity. So I told him in brief about the events leading up to my ‘epiphany’ and my internal transformation. It was a journey to reality rather than a ‘religious’ quest. I wasn’t looking for God, but that’s where my search for answers about the meaning of life took me. Srila Prabhupada and the devotees gave me answers I couldn’t find anywhere else. Alan listened and so did Sachi. She hadn’t heard me speak about it before either and both appreciated it.

Sachi returned on the train to Cambridge on Sunday night, with a promise to meet up again in New Delhi. She signed up for a one month course on ecology and alternative energy from mid-July to mid-August. More about that later.

Shortly after my visit Mum made the decision to move into an aged care home. It was a big wrench, giving up her privacy and a house she’s lived in for 60+ years, but she’s made the adjustment quite well and the advantage of having instant care and help on hand now out weighs the loss of individual privilege. The house has to be sold to help meet the cost.

She’s philosophical about it. When I phoned her the day before she moved, she told me, “This is it, this is the last stage.” She’s not hankering to stay on. She’s told me quite a few times that she wants to move on. She’s had enough of her old body and she told me, “When I go to sleep at night, I pray that I won’t wake up. I don’t want to take another birth.”

We’ve talked about what she should do when the time comes to leave, that she should take shelter in God and chant the holy names. At least she agrees in theory, and for my part I pray to Srila Prabhupada to be there to guide her onto her next transitionary stop. At least I hope she will take birth in a devotee family.

Mum with my younger brother Gary, Sachi, and Gary’s boys.

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