Zest for Life: Tori

A biography is, for some an attempt to relive in their twilight days their greater moments in the sun while ignoring the cloudy episodes of their past. For others, it is an opportunity to minimise mistakes, claim capabilities, and to usurp pundits with an obituary of their own making.I as Tori have no such luxury. For most of my life, I have been praised or pilloried by myself, my so-called friends and one or two family members by bystanders who believed that they knew me better than my friends or close family. In their eyes reside many hundreds of stories, some accurate, others almost embarrassing in their praise, and many, especially in recent years, abusive and insulting, even libellous. In this story, I cover my childhood and adult life to this point, 2020. I tell the truth as I experienced it, not as I wished it to be. In doing so, I am reminded of the words of the English essayist, William Hazlitt: An honest human speaks the truth, though it may give offence: a vain human, in order that it may.