DAVID BENTATA

  MY LIFE© - CHAPTER 43 - MY HIP REPLACEMENT OPERATION On the 29 th September 2020 – yes, the Covid Year - I went in to St Bernard’s for the hip operation …. Finally! … Mr Boerger (silly thing calling a Doctor by plain "Mister" once he becomes a surgeon!) saw me, and seeing as he was in a good mood, I half-jokingly asked if he was going to increase the length of my right leg as I had suggested in a previous meeting we had. “We shall increase it as I said I would, but I cannot make it as long as the left one. That would put too much strain on the muscles, ligaments, tendons on your right leg which has been used to the length it has now after so many years.” This was great news. When I was 10 I broke my right leg in a fall. Greenstick fracture at the head of the femur and that pet of the femur never grew from then on. I have had a difference of just under 5cm in length and been making it up over the 63 years using both internal lifts and at time also externally higher hee...

  MY LIFE © - Chapter 41   - Rite of Passage Thank Heaven there were no mobile phones for selfies in the 1960s. We'll look back at the old days with nostalgia, but if we scratch the surface of that nostalgic mask, we could very well find many a rotten circumstance. Because of this, Chapter 41 has no real photos to show you. As the writer of these chapters I feel a profound loss not being able to add the authentic visual impact. On the other hand, photos of this “rite of passage” would be very liable to injunctions from anyone who looked through such photos, including all the children and even grandchildren of those who lived that era.. What am I talking about? I am talking about our neighbouring town of La Linea, and a very particular Street in it still called "Calle Gibraltar". Probably since before the Spanish Civil War, but definitely in its immediate aftermath, that rather shoddy Street was the red-light district of La Linea, and much frequented by Gibralta...

  MY LIFE © - Chapter 40 - THE DISCRETE GENERATION. Here is a chapter that truly something that surprised me. I had been going out steadily with a local young lady since 1968. Differences between us were considerable and pursuing this relationship was going to prove difficult. Neither of us wanted to give up. Her parents realising that as long as we both lived in the same city especially a city like Gibraltar, virtually an island since the frontier was completely closed, decided to send her to London to stay with a distant cousin of her father, a Mr Mendoza. Mr Mendoza was one of these who was sent to London with his family during the evacuation in the early 1940s. He had married an English lady and settled in London, in Streatham in fact. And it was there that my girlfriend lodged. Meanwhile back at the ranch...... I found it impossible to live without her, but nor could I find it possible to find a reason to tell my parents I wanted to go to London after her. And here is ...

  MY LIFE © - CHAPTER 39 - LOVE AT FIFTEEN "El Queens in the Afternoon" .... does that sound too Hemingway for a title? What about "The Black Merc"...hhmmmm too Agatha Christie?? No, I guess the title of this chapter as "Love at 15", though it may sound too Wimbledon -(Love - 15) – is the more appropriate one, so we should leave it at that. This chapter is about a Love Story in Gibraltar in 1960 or 1961. I am sure many millennials will find it somewhat ridiculous, yet the earlier generation will easily identify with the intense passion which our hearts battled for what was then so much…..yet today means so little. Yes, I fell in love. I would do that often throughout my life, "fell" being much more the operative word than "love". These were the days when "las niñas del Convent Verde" would flood Main Street at 4:15 at the end of the school day. El Convento Verde (The Green Convent) referred to the green uniform all ...