Thursday, 13 August 2009 21:09 Last Updated on Friday, 10 September 2010 15:10
Having been born and brought up in Birmingham, England, from 1958, it took some adjusting to attain international spiritual enlightenment! The apprenticeship was achieved by spells at school in Moseley, the University of Leeds, learning my trade in the travel industry at Horizon Holidays and then moving to the "big smoke".
Five further years in management roles finally culminated in a somewhat irritating exit from the travel business when the two companies I was running were brought down by ill-educated, vainglorious and rapacious financial types!
Re-training as a teacher, at Canterbury, led to spells in schools in Kent and Lincolnshire, specialising in Humanities subjects and special needs. A decade in the English education system is probably enough for anyone and the thirteen years spent in the travel industry had resulted in decidedly itchy feet.
Having treated the athlete's foot my next step was Tanzania, where I commenced international teaching, spending two years in Moshi, where I had the good fortune to meet my wife, Andrea, and a various assortment of other wildlife! After a year back in England, in a school in South Yorkshire, my life was reorganised, and it was time for the pair of us to head for China, hauling up in Suzhou.
After six years teaching in China, we have recently moved on, and are now based in Doha, Qatar in the Middle East. We are both working at the International School of London, Qatar, Andrea teaching English and Spanish while I deliver Geography and Business Studies.
Having taken a year off last year to pursue my writing, the fruits of my labours are beginning to bud, if not yet blossom. My novel on Chinese history is a grandiose sweeping project of which I have now completed the first two sections. The writing of the third section will commence shortly, which will give me a trilogy to present to the literary agents who will all be biting at my heels! If you think the last year might have been an easy time, think again and please consider I put down two sections of 100,000 words each in under six months!
A big thank you to my family, my colleagues, my friends and particularly to Andrea; they have all contributed to make my life a rather wonderful and sometimes mysterious journey!