About the author

I was born and brought up in Brighton, before being taken abroad for four years at the age of eleven. I lived in Denmark for two years, followed by another two years in Tenerife, going to school in both countries and having to learn both languages in order to learn anything.

I left school at the age of 14 to work on a market stall in Puerto De La Cruz for a year, before returning to England and being compelled to go back to school in a very trying time, and manner. (that will be a prequel when I can face it). By this time I’d had a total of eleven schools, moved country three times, and house nineteen times.

With a 42 year age gap between my parents, my father was elderly (he was 67 when he fathered me) and died 3 days after my 16th birthday. My mother was very unconventional and hard work (and why the prequel is difficult to face), so I had to make my own way more or less from then onward.

Luckily I inherited my father’s sense of independence and have an ‘outside of the box’ view of life, with my travelling experience expanding my sense of my place in the world. I never really conformed, or understood the need to conform. I believe that due to this ‘difference’ in cultural exposure helped me tread unconventional paths, with a heightened ‘I can do that’ attitude.

I first started my motorcycling adventures at the tender age of 16, and still riding at the age of 66, I have notched up 50 years of riding and having fun. I am still a keen biker, although the bones are now creaking and groaning, but I’m obstinate enough to carry on until I really cannot. In fact it is like having a workout just trying to get astride my current machine. I may have to return to platform shoes if my health keeps being awkward.

Having always had a good sense of myself, and an attitude to match, and wanting to write my story since the early 1980s, I learned to type and started, but have only recently been freed to actually get my work out there, for you to enjoy (life, relationships and work getting in the way). I hope my efforts make you laugh, and perhaps take you back to the times I am putting into print.

So, here I am, written as honestly and openly as I can, but hopefully not too ‘in your face’.