I can hardly believe that this is my half century of blogs already. I have no idea whether you have enjoyed all of them or even some of them. What I have tried to do is to reach into past episodes of my life that I felt were interesting and often exciting. I have also […]
I initially tried something slightly different with this blog but, as usual, I ran it by my ever-patient wife Hero, whose reaction to all my writing is a wonderful barometer of how my words communicate to other people. She’s a tough cookie in this respect and never tells me that I’ve written something good if […]
I first visited Jersey in the Channel Islands in 1938, at the age of 2. Unlike many other people who cannot remember that far back, I do have a few memories of that time. My parents decided to leave Weybridge in Surrey, England to live in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, close to the […]
How many of you have ever been on a really long train journey? Perhaps some of you have been lucky enough to experience the splendour of the Trans-Siberian Express which runs from Moscow to Vladivostok on the eastern edge of the Russian/Asian continent, taking a leisurely 15 days in the process. Despite having visited some […]
In an earlier blog, I briefly told the story of my adventure with the Persian and Oriental rug mogul who wanted to create a television series based around the idea of a conflict between two brothers, one of whom favored intrinsic wealth such as Persian rugs, rare paintings, bloodstock and gold, versus the other brother […]
I may come back to my life story at some point, but for the moment suffice to say that I grew up in Cape Town from age of 10, went to school 1,200 miles away outside Durban Natal and then left school on a train that travelled 2,500 miles from the East Coast to Walvis […]
Continuing my journey to Africa, at Marseilles my parents and I boarded a Greek liner called the Corinthian. We set off across the Mediterranean on a ship with the euphemistic title of “luxury Liner,” which may have been very grand before the war but, in 1946, it had recently been decommissioned as a troop ship. […]
How many British 10-year-olds, having experienced the rigors and often terrors of World War II, were then propelled into over a year of travelling and, best of all, no school? In 1946, my parents decided that there would be better opportunities available in a country like South Africa, than in the aftermath of war-ravaged Britain. […]
After weeks of frustrating physical inactivity due to the madness of COVID-19, I found my mind casting back to times when I was hyperfit and tended to express this in exuberant, even foolish, ways. Before I met my wife Hero, I took a holiday at Cathedral Peak Hotel in the heart of the Drakensberg Mountains, […]
These blogs are virtually the first I’ve ever written and I have to say that, compared with the many other forms of writing I have attempted over the years, it’s proved to be an exhilarating exercise in free-form writing. Most of my writing career has been involved with much more structured forms, apart from poetry, […]