Mis Patios Perdidos - Humbert Hernandez’s Tenth Publication Out Next Week
‘Mis Patios Perdidos - Memorias de una infancia gibraltareña’, the tenth publication by Humbert Hernandez, will be released next week on Amazon.
Mr Hernandez spoke about the work which recreates the lost world of patio life in 1950s Gibraltar:
“For a long time, I had been mulling over writing about life in our long-lost patios in Gibraltar. This involved throwing my mind back many decades to my infancy to describe a way of living which has all but disappeared with the arrival of the high-rise blocks of flats in different estates and also the fashionable culture of property owning.
“There is no doubt that living in our old-styled patios had its obvious drawbacks: overcrowding, a lack of privacy, insanitary conditions and other inconveniences, but there were other positive aspects which, to my mind, outweighed these: good neighbourly relations, speedy help to the needy, human warmth and close friendships. Life flowed at a much more measured pace, much less preoccupied with the latest technological gadgets, much more focused on one’s basic needs and on those around one. That way of life is not only lost but is now getting wiped out from our collective memory.
“To undertake this project, I was motivated by one objective: to recover some brushstrokes from these past decades in the infant memory of an eight-year-old boy of the 1950’s. These memories of gossipy neighbours, incidents, brawls, births, festivities and deaths have been arranged as a literary mosaic, each piece a brief account of a reminiscence brought to life by the boy, Luisito, who often misinterprets what he hears or what he sees or both. It often gives rise to hilarious situations or to spectacular rows between different people. The book naturally contains autobiographical details, but it is certainly not the author’s biography. Rather it is a composite of many different snapshots of infants who lived and grew up in a working-class district in Gibraltar: El Jardín de Glynn or Lynch’s Lane.
“Each account was triggered off by a spark of truth, at which point the author’s imagination took over and built a scaffolding and a whole edifice of mini stories, some serious, others tragic, but many uproariously funny just as life itself is, reflecting the patio life of our town of the 1940’s and 1950’s, the memory of which is now in danger of extinction from our collective memory.
“Were that to happen, it would be a great pity since it would mean a loss of a vibrant part of our civil, social history. Here is a narrative which does not fight shy of practically every aspect of life, however crude, however raw, however distasteful. Nothing is swept under the carpet.”
MIS PATIOS PERDIDOS may be obtained from Amazon outlets as from 14 June, priced at £3.99 Kindle version, £8.99 paperback.
