The awkward moments that made Oswald Igg.

To fully appreciate the finding of the 70s porn, you need to understand the mind of an Austrian who likes boxes, labelling his boxes and having all his boxes in a regimented order.

Oswald Igg is an Austrian. As I have already outlined, he fashioned his own toys as a child out of blocks of wood. His father was strict and responsible, his mother what they call a 'haus frau' - a house wife. Without going into too much family history, it should be said that the Igg family were quite well off and then after the second world war (and subsequent birth of my father) quite poor.

Oswald Igg's father ran a family business, a renowned butcher and perveyour of meat and poultry. Oswald's mother, a smiling pudding of a women cooked all manner of Gulash and schnitzel and roasted chickens and spicy sausages and soups and pastries and cakes at home. Oswald's older sister, Ulenka was nine years his senior and in love with a doctor named Ernie.

Being born just shy of the end of the second world war meant my father grew up during the humbler part of their family history. His father was in a Russian prison for being on the wrong team and his mother was left on rations, looking after Oswald and Ulenka. Needless to say, these conditions provided a harsh (but beautiful) environment and world for Oswald to live and learn in.

Yes, he carved his own teddy, but in a way he was blessed to be growing up in nature. He was an Austrian Tom Sawyer; a child who fished, hunted, camped, swam, trecked and generally went wild through the forests and lakes of southern Austria.

His childhood was starkly beautiful, but of course hard. Austria was defeated, it felt defeated and it showed. Rations were a way of life and growing up was often the colder side of comfortable. When your side loses, there's a glum mood in the pub afterwards and this was Austria in the late 1940s.

He went to school and was quite clever. In his teens he owned a motorbike on which he broke his leg. At just eighteen he was enlisted to carry out his national service and joined the Austrian army, where every third bullet was real and he dislocated his left hip under a tank. He's had many accidents my dad, but they're a whole set of awkward moments unto themselves.

As the aspects of his upbringing colluded, they formed an Oswald shaped cocktail made up of:

1 part strict discipline,
2 parts Austrian perfectionism
2 fl.oz of Viennese charm
3 fl.oz Intelligence
A heavy handed sprinkling of impatientness
1.5 dashes of absolute accident proneness
One good blob of compassion or kindness to garnish

It was at the early age of only eighteen that his father tragically died of a heart attack, mortally wounding the young Oswald. He went on, left Austria (a decision which can't have been easy for anyone) and spent years working all over Europe; in Paris, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and England, where he met my mother.

I liken the mind of my father to that of his garage.

When I was a child, his garage could be seen as either the works of a genius inventor, obsessed artist or criminal mastermind. Everything, and I mean everything was decompartmentalised and fitted like the most practical mosaic ever to have germinated onto a long wall in a garage.

A vast array of different shaped plastic containers made up a cog-like frame work of odds and ends on that wall. Like the inside of a giant clock, each compartment had a job in the grand scale of things and was labelled appropriately. Labels were tapped out onto one of several label making machines and normally came in blue and white or sometimes yellow. A bunch of Alan keys from all walks of life lived in a red plastic shelf, labelled 'Alan's keys'. Not sure who Alan was but you always knew where to find his keys.

Everything had its place. Everything was lined up, shuffled in and kept in remarkable order. If something was hanging, it was hanging like the possession of an obsessive compulsive. To the right of his work bench were hanging: a flare gun, a glue gun, a tape gun, a scout knife, a battery tester and bull dog spark leads.

Each objected secured its place in the garage by getting a black marker pen outline. As soon as you took something off the wall, there was police outline around the missing article. If something was missing he'd know. If you'd borrowed something and put it back the wrong way, he'd also know. You'd be hard pressed to use something in that garage and have him not know about it.

So you see, not only was the 70s porn stashed and labelled in a white meat box, it was one of maybe fifty meat boxes that were stacked neatly in labelled towers either end of the loft.