Work in progress
Previous | Contents | Next Our houseIs a very, very, very fine houseWith two cats in the yardLife used to be so hardNow everything is easy ’cause of you — Graham Nash / Crosby, Stills and Nash § In the summer of 1971-2 we were ready to start boat building, but there ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next “I reckon we can build it,” he’d said, “but I’m not sure we can sail it round the world.” I said, “That’s OK, I’m sure we can sail around the world — I’m just not so sure we can build it!” He laughed when I ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Some time after the 1971 school year finished Ken and Dianne moved up to Auckland and rented a place in Green Bay so they could join us. Ken got a job teaching art at Lynnfield College. Brian Donovan had a lease arrangement on an old boatyard and ... Read more
Previous | Contents | It felt good to be back in the arms of Pan Am First Class Standby for the flight to Bangkok. We landed in Delhi to refuel — sat on the tarmac while an Indian lady with downcast eyes tidied the cabin and swept around our feet with ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next The overnight train took us direct to Florence, where we checked into the Nuova Italia, a nice little hotel on Via Faenza. Heather says the shower was cold but breakfast included. Florence was beautiful, no other word will do, and — surely not — seems serene in retrospect. ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Most of these travel stories are taken from diaries we wrote at the time, and letters and emails home. But the next few pages are extracted from a couple of dozen photos, and what we actually remember 45 years later. I’ve tried to resurrect a few slides but ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next § York impressed us too — York Minster and the Keep of the old York Castle — but it was memorable also because Heather wanted to visit a hairdresser. Having agreed where to meet, I wandered off to kill time while I waited — and waited and waited ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next After stopping for cups of stewed tea and coffee at an American style self-service diner we drove through the West End, past Harrods, through Lambeth, where Heather was born, and eventually out on to the M2. The traffic was very heavy — the smell of diesel and petrol ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next The bill for our first night having vastly exceeded our budget, Heather opened our $15/Day book for the first time — I think it was Frommer — and discovered the Hotel Seton on 40th Street, west of Lexington. Midtown, right where we wanted to go. We checked out ... Read more
Contents Mostly that was because of the people we met — the locals, of course, but also the Brits, Aussies, Chinese, Americans, Japanese and others we met or worked with. Our own team, local and expat, and the aid workers, missionaries, traders, bank officials, diplomats, fishermen, yachties, pilots and so ... Read more