When I think back to the times that unexpected opportunities occurred out of the blue, I usually took them, blithely unaware of the future consequences, and luckily most of them turned out well. However, there were also opportunities that, had I taken them, my life would have been very different and in most cases the […]
We all seem to walk along a slippery path in life. Some slide off it more often than others. Some seemingly barely slip at all but move more slowly and rarely reach the other end of the path. Most of us have moments when a slip seems to be inevitable; but, somehow, we cling onto […]
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. […]