This is the first chapter from Kevin's book which can be ordered in paperback or digitally:
CHAPTER ONE
My spiritual mission began with a most interesting family tree of continental origin. The varied roots were established through my mother Catherine Soderberg, the daughter of a Swedish national father, and an Irish mother, who was of part Norwegian, French and Irish descent, whose surnames were Buenberg, Laurent, and Cavanagh respectively. Both her parents were of the Roman Catholic faith and lived in Liverpool .
Her father, by all accounts, was a quiet, studious, intelligent man who was initially employed as a ship’s carpenter and latterly owned a prosperous tobacco business. My grandmother was employed part-time by relatives working in their hostel which accommodated foreign seamen.
My grandmother also happened to have strong Irish Catholic sympathies. This I gathered from my mother, who remembered her waiting at the roadside for the annual Orange Day Parade and gleefully without warning, hurling the Irish tricolour into the march, causing a near riot.
Sadly, my grandmother died at the age of forty from a brain haemorrhage; my grandfather passing on not too long afterwards with pneumonia. My mother was then housed with relatives in Liverpool and eventually met my father whilst on a visit to Warrington . They were married in Warrington on her 21st birthday.
My parents moved house several times in the early years of their marriage, before finally settling into a new council house on Dallam Estate on the outskirts of Warrington , a medium sized town situated between Manchester and Liverpool . Mother, unfortunately, lost her first child Monica, aged two, through gastro-enteritis, before my brother Philip was born seven years later.
My father, also christened Philip, was born in Warrington , the son of two Irish parents, both Roman Catholics. Having trained and worked as a rigger in his early years, he subsequently served with the RAF during the second world war. His five campaign medals are presently placed with pride on my hall wall. My father eventually secured regular employment with the local council as a labourer on the highways, and my parents moved into an old dilapidated terraced house near the centre of Warrington , number 13, Elizabeth Street .
The earth entrance for my spiritual task took place with my birth, on the 1st August 1946 at 8.00 am , in Warrington General Hospital . This incarnation was at a time of my choosing with the direction of my soul group and three members of this spirit intelligentsia assigned to be my spiritual guides. The Irish midwife at the time of my birth suggested I should be called Kevin after one of the early Irish saints. This was the beginning of my chosen spiritual and psychic task.
The Winter following my birth was very harsh indeed, actually one of the severest recorded this century, not very suitable for myself, a Leo subject who is astrologically ruled by the sun, needing warmth. I feel sure that, as an infant, I would have felt very cold throughout the 1946/47 Winter from the beginning of this earth life.
Before I reached my first birthday, I suffered an umbilical hernia, and was rushed to hospital for my first successful operation. At the age of three, it was noticed that I was suffering from severe stomach pains. My mother immediately called in the doctor when I became seriously ill. Peritonitis was subsequently diagnosed; I was again rushed into hospital and quickly lapsed into a coma. The priest was brought in and the last rites were administered.
As it happened, on this particular day, there was another boy who had been admitted to the ward with the same condition. The doctor said a new drug had been given to him and, as it had worked positively, he was hopeful that it might work for me, and he would like to try it. I was sinking fast, but its usage proved successful and I recovered very quickly. I am now aware that near death experiences, although traumatic, usually open up the psychic senses. This traumatic episode was part of God’s plan for my future tasks.
I was five when my sister Angela, the apple of my Father’s eye, was born. He had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of a girl since my sister Monica had previously died due to illness.
I vividly remember the house on the Dallam Council estate where my parents had finally settled. It was very spartan and cold. There were neither carpets nor wallpaper. In the bedroom where I slept, it was very damp. I was always very chesty as a child, suffering from bouts of chronic bronchitis.
As I was maturing, I felt a great affinity to bees, plants insects, birds, and to cats in particular although I was very wary of dogs. I loved them but I kept my distance. When I was six years old, a large black dog, a crossbreed, leapt on me from a nearby garden and bit my leg quite badly. The estate had many such fierce, uncontrolled strays. I never approached them until I knew that they were friendly. I possessed an in-built sensitivity which told me which dogs fell into this category.
As a young boy in my sixth year, I remember walking through the nearby meadows, inquisitively looking around, and exploring the area by the canal. I remember my father arriving on his bicycle accompanied by our little mongrel dog Rex, a very loyal animal, despite being kept in a shoddy little kennel and never being allowed indoors, which I found unreasonable. After a severe telling off for wandering near the canal, my father produced a leather belt with a massive buckle and periodically thrashed me with it whilst hurrying me on the way home. I remember ducking, to avoid contact, but the blows still bounced painfully off my head. The punishment was an unforgettable experience - I knew that I didn’t deserve this kind of treatment.
When I spoke of this incident recently with my mother, she swore that my father had never physically harmed her, and she will insist on dismissing the physical abuse I suffered as a trivial matter. In reality, the only action required at the time was to take me to one side and explain to me the possible dangers that the local canal presented. I did not need to be physically assaulted, but he could not see it any other way. I felt very angry about this episode and probably felt resentful towards my father for a very long time afterwards.
During my early childhood, I recall brief moments of inner satisfaction which the insects and birds provided. I was most happy when a butterfly chose to land on me or especially when a songbird would stay put as I approached it, letting me listen to its beautiful warbling. I also felt a sense of comfort when I was surrounded by large trees whilst walking through the nearby woods. I decided that I owned all the beautiful garden spiders in our rear garden, named them accordingly, and spoke to each one in turn as they settled in their webs.
The following year a pair of brown mice chose the bottom of our yard for residence. I was thrilled on discovering their choice of our house, and for the best part of a week was most excited, constantly lifting the mound and watching the resultant offspring. My joy quickly turned to sadness when I arrived home at the end of the week. My mother dispassionately informed me that she had discovered the nest and had asked my father to lift the mice out and destroy them. I was heartbroken, and to make matters worse, they could not understand why the destruction of vermin should cause me so much concern. I felt the mice had done no wrong at all, being so cute and harmless; my parents felt otherwise.
Later in the Summer a wasps’ nest was discovered in the rear garden on the bank of a privet hedge. They happily swarmed in and out of their ‘des res’ throughout the day. I enjoyed watching them immensely, then ... ‘ALARM’ - my mother, on finding it, decided to pour bleach down their little home. In a state of panic and to prove they would not harm anyone, I lay head first at the mouth of the nest entrance for a full hour. They poured out during this time in a regular stream, walked on my face and did not sting me once. My mother relented. ‘I HAD SAVED THEM!!!’ I then thanked the wasps for acceding to my request to be on their best behaviour.
The material world was very much a reality and it was thought by my parents that I was too attentive to vermin, because I did my very best to save slugs as well as wasps and mice. My mother would insist on pouring salt over them, but to me, they were living things; to everybody else they seemed repulsive. Of course they can pose a problem, but still I felt that they too were part of God’s creation and deserved the right to live. After all they had not asked to be born.
Leo’s do not take kindly to being rejected. A very early experience was ingrained on my memory during the annual Walking Day festivities when the local population, children and adults alike, would walk through the town with their church banners. By this time I was eight and this was my first walk dressed up in all my finery, taking part with the Sacred Heart primary school.
The accepted tradition was for relatives and neighbours to run out from the roadside to place money into the children’s purses whilst they walked. Every other child in my procession had their purses filled with coins, but mine was empty. I felt so dejected and actually knocked on a few neighbours’ doors, cheekily asking for a few coins. It was a sad experience.
My mother never possessed much money. My father’s wages were in the lowest rate band possible and she made all of our clothes whilst we were youngsters. During my eighth year, my mother took Philip and I to relatives who lived on the Wirral coast. She showed us how to collect cockles and mussels and also took us on a bus journey to Fleetwood to find and pester the trawler men for crabs, which she later put into her shopping bag to take home.
One day a large half-dead crab escaped whilst travelling back home on the bus, crawled onto a man’s hat in the next seat and camped there. He was not aware, being asleep at the time. The whole bus rocked with laughter. She quickly recovered it and placed it back in her bag. It was bound for the pot. Poor creature. I had no say in the matter.
In order to help out with the household budget, my father kept chickens in the rear garden. My mother and father would insist on dispatching me to the houses in the neighbourhood to collect potato peelings which had been left for refuse. These would then be cooked and mashed for chicken feed. I felt rather humiliated when approaching neighbours and asking for their garbage, but I was forced to carry out this chore under the threat of a clout if I refused.
I remember one particular house I visited where one of the sons never lost an opportunity to denigrate and ridicule me. I reminded him one day that his father was a dustbin man and was collecting people’s potato peelings on a daily basis. He never taunted me again. The message I had delivered proved to be a most effective deterrent.
During this year in January my mother had to enter hospital for a prolapsed womb operation. She was expected to be absent for two weeks. Towards the end of the fortnight, one evening after dinner was finished, I was peering out of the living room window eagerly awaiting her return when she suddenly appeared at the front gate with a neighbour carrying her suitcase. My heart leapt with delight. I loved her so much. My feeling of relief at being close to her once again was indescribable, an uplifting experience, unhappily not too often repeated in the early stages of my childhood.
In the depths of the 1954 Winter, I had my first out-of-body experience. Being a typical ‘scallywag’ I was scooting around the school yard sliding on the ice at full speed. Suddenly I lost balance, hurtled into a brick wall and fell heavily, banging my head on the ground in the process. The next instant I was rising above my body and watching the other children gathered around, trying to awaken my physical shell.
I recall the incident with mixed feelings - being at the same time startled and frightened - but also strangely exhilarated and excited. I must have been hovering about twenty feet above in the air, but as soon as I started thinking about my body, I felt myself rocketing back into it and recovered consciousness to find two pals busily slapping my face. The eventual price for my adventure was a throbbing headache that lasted for the rest of the day.
At the time I didn’t realise that I was experiencing an out-of-body experience and my schoolmates could not understand my later description of this little journey. I was so full of mischief at this primary school stage. It amazed me how I managed to assimilate or digest any educational information at all.
I took my 11+ examination at nine because of the way my birthday fell during the Summer. I passed with a high mark and entered the Grammar School at ten years of age. It was then decided that I should go to a Catholic grammar school but unfortunately, we lived approximately twelve miles away and my mother couldn’t really afford the bus fare, so the education department agreed that I could be placed at the Thomas Boteler Grammar School, where I had heard that Catholics whilst not entirely welcomed with open arms, were tolerated. It was a Church of England school.
My ninth year was coming to a close and I remembered at the time the constant coldness of our house. My brother and I slept together in one single bed. He was placed at the top with myself at the bottom, with a large khaki ex-army overcoat covering the two of us. My brother being the stronger, chose the shoulder end and I was left with the cooler bottom end. We slept in a fashion with his feet stuck in my face through the duration of the night and they didn’t smell very sweet either, but the coat was reasonably warm.
My mother never thought that hankies were a necessity because I was forever wiping my nose on the sleeve of my coat. The shiny reflection was a fixture. Both my shoes usually had holes in them with three or four layers of cardboard packed inside which never lasted very long. Sometimes my feet were left bleeding for hours because I frequently used to walk to school, a distance of two or three miles, and kept the two pence which my mother gave me for the bus fare. It was saved to buy sherbets which were regarded as treats. As I didn’t have any pocket money, my greatest enjoyment was roaming the countryside, which fortunately, was free.
At this time paranormal activity was increasing at home, phantom footsteps, frequent voices, knocks, strong fragrances and objects mysteriously going missing and reappearing. These things went on continually and my mother became quite used to it; she accepted it knowing the source was surrounding my father who was a natural psychic.
It was at this time in my ninth year that I began to see colours around people, which were obviously their auras, a discovery which I found most intriguing. I also felt a reassuring warmth at times when I felt very lonely and sad. It was later that I realised that my early brush with death at the age of three had opened up my psychic centres, and this was enabling me to read the auras that surround all living creations, and also to be sensitive to the spirit world.
During this year in the Summer holidays, I underwent a quite eventful spiritual experience. This was the occasion when I was taken with my family down to my Aunt Ella’s house in St. Albans , Hertfordshire. I remember at that time it was a welcome trip and a very nice place. I settled down quickly but, unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I started receiving previously undisclosed information about my Aunt Ella.
There were rooms in the house which were always locked. One morning I happened to close my eyes and immediately saw several bottles of sherry conveniently hidden in the drawers and cupboards. I mentioned this to my mother and never thought any more about it. The next day I asked Aunty Ella, “Why do you keep all those sherry bottles in the cupboards?” My aunt gave me a long, strange look. Into the third day of the holiday she turned around to my mother and said, “Well, I think it is time that Kevin went home. I think it is best for him and me. I just feel uncomfortable with him here.” I protested but was soon dispatched back to Warrington by bus, which turned out to be a very long journey.
Afterwards, when my mother returned home, she told me that Aunt Ella had informed her that she had always thought I was rather strange. She also confessed to my mother that she was drinking heavily and was secreting the bottles of sherry around the bedrooms, which I had clairvoyantly seen. I later learned that she was drinking to ease her suffering, brought on by the harsh treatment she received from my uncle. That was possibly the first time where my clairvoyant psychic senses were opened up - maybe uncontrolled, but it was obvious to me that I knew things that I wouldn’t have known. With hindsight, if I had been a little more mature, I would have kept quiet, but at that age, I didn’t know any different and was oblivious to the gravity of the situation.
Now into the third year at primary school, it was always the ultimate challenge for the boys to climb to the top of the church tower from the inside shaft which had steel rungs spaced every 46cm. The entrance to the church was conveniently attached to the school. On impulse, I finally decided to meet the challenge.
One lunch time, I sneaked into church and found the door to this particular area from where I could climb the tower. I decided to acquire some of the candles that were placed by the statue of Our Lady to enable me to light my way, once I was inside the base of the shaft. I could then safely negotiate my way to the top of the shaft, which I had to climb to reach the base of the spire. Finally I made my successful ascent, discovering that the view into the road below was quite magnificent. Little did I know that across the main road from the church, the office staff from the Crossfields soap company were looking out from their windows, watching me hanging in and out from the pillars of the base of the church spire. They immediately contacted the Fire Brigade and the police.
The headmaster, Mr Donlevy, was alerted. The next thing I remember was his bellowing from down below for me to come down. I complied with his request as quickly as I could. On touching ‘terra firma’ I remarked to him “It was quite a climb sir.” The headmaster did not look very pleased. His eyes spelled inevitable punishment for me. I was then dragged off to his rooms and given a good thrashing with a cane. What left a deep impression on me was the fact that I was given the thrashing, not for all the chaos I had caused, but mainly for stealing the candles from the base of Our Lady’s statue. I considered this illogical chastisement to be a typical reaction from a Roman Catholic headmaster upholding traditional beliefs; my sin was great! I have since apologised to the Heavenly Father for this incident. I feel sure that he has forgiven me, as I only stole two candles.
During the last Summer holiday before I started at the Grammar School, myself and some other rascals were drawn to the irresistible playground which was the American tip belonging to Burtonwood Army Base, just a couple of miles away from my house. To reach this particular dump one had to negotiate many obstacles, iron railings, a railway embankment, railway lines, a bridge, and a wide fast flowing brook (over which was a large cast iron services pipe, covered with long spikes).
I used to run across this, with total disregard to the dangers involved. A field full of cow pats presented the final obstacle before reaching the tip itself.
It was a wonderful feeling moving and rooting amongst all the militaria and discarded uniforms. I carefully chose one and by the time I made my way back to the estate, following the other kids. I was transformed into an officer, wearing an oversized American Captain’s uniform, gleaming with insignia. The trouser legs, which I had hitched up, were trailing around my feet nearly tripping me up, but I felt triumphant, an emotion that soon evaporated when I reached home, because the smell of the tip was a dead give-away.
My father’s reaction was to give me a good belting. He was a big man, 190cm tall, and weighing 100 kilos and he didn’t think twice about using his hands. Psychic abilities he undoubtedly possessed, but as far as sensitivity to my pain was concerned, he didn’t seem to be aware of it, or at least never showed it.
The local canal was also a great attraction in which I used to swim, naked. It was free to use and this fact also appealed strongly to all the kids. It really was a dangerous and diseased place to swim, where we actually courted death, as people were strongly suspected of using it to dispose of their dead pets. In reality, the canal waters were filthy, but I loved the swimming and diving. Having no pocket money I could not go to the local swimming baths. Unfortunately, the canal smell used to linger quite strongly and I also got a good hiding for that on reaching home.
One Saturday morning during the school holidays Michael Littler, one of my pals, called at my house to help me clear out the chicken coop and also to conveniently help himself to some produce from the large blackcurrant and loganberry bushes at the bottom of our garden.
We finished the chores quite quickly and were seated having a welcome drink of milk in the kitchen. My mother returned home from the butcher’s stall and carefully placed a large sixpenny bag of bulls-eyes on the table. She had purchased them for the purpose of cooking and pressing, which she expertly carried out with the aid of two tin plates and a large flat iron. The end product provided the family with an abundant stream of sandwiches which I personally didn’t relish, but, nonetheless, ‘beggars could not be choosers’ when it came to mealtimes.
My mother briefly spoke to us and went into the hall to hang up her coat. Michael, unfortunately, could not resist peeking into the bag which resulted in him clumsily dragging it off the table and scattering the eyes all over the kitchen floor. It was an eerie sight as some of them appeared to be staring directly towards us. Michael’s face drained and he left quickly through the back door.
I recall shouting to him quite angrily with an air of resignation, “Mike, you rotten swine, don’t leave me. You know I will have to face the music!” whereupon my mother returned, saw the mess and was most displeased. “Pick them all up before they dry and be quick”, she remarked. It was a most unpleasant task. She cooked them that night. Michael made himself very scarce for a few months - we were never quite as friendly again and I still had to eat some of the finished product over the following week.
