1939 to the present, My Encounters With God ..........................................................

Probably in 1940 I was baptised (or was that christened or both? Unsure of the difference). I know it happened because I've seen me in the church register. There I am: DErick Hutton. See that odd spelling with the aparent typo of a capital 'E'? Now, thereby hangs a tale, as they say.

What makes the "mispelling" odder is the fact that my birth certificate has me as Derek.

My father was Harold Eric Hutton. It would seem he wanted me christened Eric - and why not? My guess is that he succeeded and there it was, writ thus: Eric Hutton ........... I should have been Eric for all time.

But my mother hated my father with a passion, she kept that up until she died. My guess, and of proof there is none, is that my mother quite literally crept into the church one day and simply added a 'D' in front and a 'k' behind. And hey presto! there I am, DErick.

Does it matter? Not one jot really. But it's a neat little footnote to my history.

Much later, in the 1970s, there comes a strange twist in Hutton history, which adds a little credance to the above. ...................... Earlier in this 'blog' I spoke of "getting a sister". Well that sister was called, if you recall, Antonette Frances Hutton. She was born to my father and his second wife, Eileen Josephine, in 1944.

My mother told me, and I believe my maternal grandmother confirmed it, that my father wanted to call me Anthony. This was met with dismay in the Webber family (I'll explain later) and seemingly all joined forces to prevent me from being called Anthony. Perhaps they grudging settled for Eric.

But Harold Eric wasn't to be thwarted, when his second child was born a girl he called her Antonette. Perhaps a sweet way of getting-his-own-back. Maybe he knew about DErick? Much mystery surrounds the man.

So what has all this to do with my encounters with god? Nothing at all, just rambling off the subject as I am wont to do.

My maternal grandparents were Wesleyans. Wesleyanism is an off-shoot of the Protestant church. You'll have to Google an explanation.

How they fell into Christian Science is a minor mystery. My grandmother Florence seems to have "seen that particular light" at some point in the late 1940s? Heaven knows why, she was a very smart woman. My mother seemed to be a 'converted' to the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy too. So ..... they started sending me to a Christian Science Sunday School in nearby Camberley. I'd go on the bus or my grandfather would take me in the car. I don't think I benefited much from the Sunday mornings spent thus, although my grandad would often buy me an ice-cream afterwards.

I there learned (or is that learnt?) that we are made in God's image and as God is perfect, we are therefore perfect too.
Seemingly if you believe this firmly enough all ills will be cured etc etc etc etc. It never seemed to help me much but then I likely didn't believe enough.

As soon as possible I stopped going to Sunday school and that was it ........... I became sort of faithless. I always thought 'free-thinker' sounded good but nobody accepts it as a faith - well it isn't I suppose. When you say "atheist" people look a little affronted, as if you'd said "Leprosy". Agnostic is a bit weak I think, a sort of cop-out. So maybe I'll be a free-thinker after all.

The military were always keen to get you to church and had what they called Church Parades.

I was in Westminster Abbey once when I was in the Air Training Corps, singing along with Princess Margaret but I don't think she noticed me.

The RAF loved Church Parades. Usually on windswept, rained-on parade grounds or runways. The padre would tell us how good things were and we look forward to geting away to where things were even better ... and drier and warmer. I skipped a church parade once by posing as a Roman Catholic which meant being in civvies instead of uniform and getting away on an earlier bus to the sinfulness that was Blackpool. Either God missed this transgression or it's noted in a black book somewhere. Sigh. But I still try to be good!

Ah yes, about Anthony. The English have never liked Italians. This is because the English are warlike and the Italians think war rather stupid so they supposedly make poor soldiers (did everybody forget the Romans?)
This seemingly make them quit early in a war so the English think poorly of the Italian. This is all very vague isn't it. But .................. many Italians settled in England and seemingly most ice cream businesses and ice cream sellers were Italians. Many of them were called Tony which is beacause the English perhaps think Tony is the only name for Italians. Anyway, the upshot of all this was the declaration, by the senior members of my then family, that they didn't want any descendant of theirs named after ice-crean sellers. Pretty convoluted eh? So I'm DErick or Derek and Antonette's Toni.