Eventually I will relate how I came to swim across Hong King harbour, how I was run over by a submarine in Dubai, and how I fell into the Amazon river. What follows right now is an overview of the topics that I intend to cover in greater depth later.
First and foremost is my life of travel (that is the portable life). I am positive I inherited this desire to see new places from my mother who herself was travelling into her late 70s. It actually started when I went to Norway with the Boy Scouts when I was 16, then continued with my 2 years in Hong Kong when I was in the Army. After that I knew I wanted to travel more so I sought a profession which would allow me to do this at someone elses expense. So I had 4 years in Nairobi, Kenya, 3 years in the Virgin Islands and Bermuda, 5 years in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Bahrain and Iraq, half a year in Brazil, and many more countries besides filling a major part of my working life. Outside that there were other countries I visited as a tourist and, for the last ten years since retirement, most of South America.
The profession I chose (how fortuitous) was telecommunications engineering. When I started my career transistors were a novelty and one transmitter was as big as a container. During my career I worked on systems involving high power H.F. transmitters, undersea cable, broadband microwave radio, tropospheric scatter radio, optical fibre cable, and cellular radio. I continually sought training courses to keep up with engineering developments and management techniques. The industry itself was continually expanding and developing so I was never out of work except for very short periods. When I was eventually made redundant from a major company I continued working successfully as an independent contractor with my own consultancy company.
Somehow squeezed into this was my sporting life. As a boy at school I was active in football, rugby and swimming (I couldn't do any outdoor sports in summer because of my dreadful hay fever). At University I did weight-training and basketball. In the Army while in Hong Kong I played water-polo at representative level and again while living in Nairobi. It was in Nairobi I started playing badminton, and then later in Saudi Arabia I turned to squash which I continued in Dubai, again playing at representative level. Also in Dubai I joined the British Sub-Aqua Club and qualified as a diver. In Dubai I discovered the Hash House Harriers so that when back in U.K. I started jogging during summer to keep fit for squash. This extended into running marathons and later competing in orienteering events. I started country walking with the Ramblers Association and since I particularly enjoyed mountain walking I also joined Hinckley Mountaineering Club. It was through this last association that I started ski-ing and rock climbing and I was active into my late 50s.
I doubt if I shall write much about my family life. My marriage ended in separation and divorce after seven years and, what was worse, separation from my two children Eric and Sonja who saw very little of me from then on. Although we re-established contact later on, in adult life the relationship with my children was difficult and I have not seen or heard of either them or their families for over ten years.
My childhood years with two caring parents initially in Halifax and then in Sheffield were happy despite the difficulties of being raised during a world war. Looking back now as an only child it would have been nice to have brothers and sisters and there were no other family or cousins nearby so I didn't realise what I was missing. By way of compensation I was, and still am, very fortunate in being able to make close friends who I have kept in touch with over the years and my oldest friend goes back to when we were 4 years old.
In many activities in which I have participated or clubs of which I have been a member I have always liked to get involved in the organisation as a way of putting something back into a pastime or interest from which I have derived pleasure. At some point I will include the various involvements that have occurred in my life from assisting at motor sports events, to trade union activist, to political party worker, to squash event organizer, to mountaineering club chairman, to web site designer.
Then well into middle age much to my surprise I found I was a member of two minorities. I changed sides, sexually speaking, when I was 52 or 53 (I can't be exactly sure now). As may be imagined this was a drastic change happening as it did relatively late in life. After that I lived in the closet for many years terrified that friends, family and colleagues would discover my new lifestyle. Eventually I did come out and for the most part I need not have worried. In any case I was into my 60s by then and thought that people should know sooner rather than later.
Then again in my mid-50s I realised that not only was religion totally irrelevant to me but I was quite definitely an atheist. Religion had no part in my life from my mid -teens onwards and my presence in any place of worship had been nominal. Now I became a secular humanist and atheist when I realised firstly that a persons religion is purely an accident of birth and a result of indoctrination as a child, and that religion has been and is the cause of most of the conflict in this world. I insist now that while tolerating others having a religious belief if they so wish it is a personal and private matter. What I do strongly resent is any religion or individual trying to impose its' superstitious beliefs on me or anyone else for that matter.
So, after all this, I don't have any great achievements or found any great fame. I would still like to know, however, how my name came to be on a remote peninsula in Patagonia de Chile.
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