Monday, 7 May 2007

My Profile

My email

This is information about me that does not appear on my Blogger profile. I've added it here to test out the functionality of an 'additional' profile that expands on what Blogger publishes.

  • I was born in India in 1944 and studied in various English-medium (Anglo-Indian) schools, some as a day scholar, most as a boarder, until the age of 16.
  • By the time I'd turned 17 my parents decided that the only hope for me to make my way in the world was to pack me off to the UK.
  • I arrived in the UK in March 1962, and stayed with friends that originally came from the same Railway Colony in which I lived in India.
  • I arrived on a Sunday and had landed a job by Thursday. An 'apprenticeship' that ultimately turned out to be a con, but that's for a full post some time in the future!
  • Dissatisfied with the mind-numbing, repetitive task of producing 'electrical cable twists', from the sort of light stuff (pun intended) you use every day, to heavier lengths that often ended up as 'undersea cable', I applied to join the military.
  • My first port of call was the Army, but they didn't have vacancies for 'tradesmen', only canon-fodder in the infantry. I declined and approached the RAF.
  • The RAF welcomed me into the 'Communications' trade and that's what I spent the next 36 years doing, never bored, because you never knew what awaited you when you signed on for your shift. One of the highlights was speaking to an aircraft tasked to carry HRH, The Prince of Wales, whilst it was still on the deck in Kathmandu. I happened to be on a tiny, remote island in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away. That, too will appear as a post some time in the future!
  • I met Maria during my last months in the RAF, and in 1998 I joined her in Portugal to start another life. Which I am still living. Eat your hearts out!

That is a quick résumé, to which I might add from time to time, as the notion takes me  ...

back to the top