In the Beginning....

Nope, not in the biblical sense.  Nor a reference to the Manics.

Just a bit of history.  How I started This Travellin Life.

I started late, really.  When I was a kid, my family were relatively poor.  Not breadline or anything like that, but there wasn't too much spare cash around.  My dad, after the war, had a succession of manual jobs.....he was a stoker at the Gas-works in the town where I grew up, a coalman, a removal man, a couple of factory jobs....ending up as a mill operator in a plastics factory in a nearby town.  My mum also worked, as an office cleaner and in shops, but by today's standards they were not paid a huge amount.  We ate well, never wanted for anything at Christmas or birthdays, had good (rarely second hand) clothes, mum and dad both smoked and enjoyed a night at the local pub.....all very normal for small town England in the 50s and 60s.  We were happy, and there was always laughter in our house.

But there wasn't much to spare for holidays.  We didn't have a car (to this day I don't know whether dad could drive, but I know mum couldn't), although dad had a motor bike, so trips anywhere were a bit difficult.  There were more trains and buses then, but living a good 50 miles from the nearest coast made trips An Event.....an Adventure, even....not to be taken lightly.  Holidays, when we had them (not every year) were invariably in a caravan at Pevensey Bay.  They were always good, I remember, the sun shining, the sea cold.....  But we never went "abroad".  Too expensive, I'm sure (this was before package holidays to the Continent were invented), and probably not something dad was too keen on, given that his last trip overseas landed him in the Burmese jungle for three years fighting for his life against the Japanese.

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So I never left England until I was I think 14.  A school trip, for one day, to Calais.  Channel crossing in a bitterly cold April, I remember, on a rough sea that had most of us puking over the side, or in the waste bins....some of us even managed to get to the bogs (not me....I managed to chunder over the side, facing the wrong way, and had the lot blown back all over me).  And that was on the way out: after a very dull day traipsing round a very cold, windy and unpleasant French sea-port and a visit to a pretty unimpressive museum, we had to endure the return journey.  Luckily, the weather and sea had moderated, and fortified by No6 Tipped and lemonade we got through the crossing without further mishap.  My mum was not best pleased by the state of my school blazer when I got home though......

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I didn't leave England for another 5 years after that.  Then in 1972 my dad died, of cancer, at the relatively young age of 56.  It took me years to mourn him properly; I was at first too busy helping mum and my sisters get through it, and then drunk for several years, then married with my own family and career to think about.  It took the death of my mum more than 20 years later before I found the time, and then I mourned them both.....and still do.

Anyway, a few months after dad died, my uncle (mum's brother) in Canada suggested we visited him.  We were not at all sure about that, to be honest - none of my family had flown before, it was expensive, and Canada is a hell of a long way......  But Uncle Tom overruled us, insisted we went, bought the tickets, and in September 1973 off we went - me, mum and my sister. 

We were terrified.  We flew in a British Caledonian Airlines Boeing 707 from Gatwick to Toronto, sitting up the back of the cabin because my sister had read in Woman's Own that if you did that you were more likely to survive a crash.  It was cramped (although state of the art, by today's standards comfort was minimal really), with no in-flight entertainment and very average food.  But drinks were free, and we could smoke ourselves silly (yep, in those days smoking was allowed in the rear of the plane....another good reason to sit there).  But it was a L-O-N-G flight.........

The trip was great.  We stayed three weeks, into October, and the weather was superb, hot and sunny for the most part.  Canada in the fall is beautiful - in all my travels since then, I can't remember any colours as stunning and vivid as those yellows and reds and golds on the maples in Gatineau Park....indeed, everywhere we went in Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara.....  Absolutely glorious.  We travelled down to Niagara Falls, and got soaked walking the tunnel complex behind the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, but no-one wanted to come with me on the Maid of the Mist, the pleasure boat that goes through the turbulance to within feet of the base of both American and Canadian falls, so (to my lasting regret) I gave it a miss.  We ate like royalty.....I put on nearly a stone in weight over the three weeks, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to shake it off ever since.....and it was wonderful to spend time with family I hardly knew and hadn't seen for years. 

The return flight was better.  The British Caledonian flight we were booked on was half empty, so they cancelled it and transferred us all onto a half empty Wardair Canada flight......on a 747.  Mum and my sister, predictably, were even more terrified than they had been on the way over.  In fact my sister has never overcome her fear of flying, and now rarely leaves the UK.  A couple of trips to Canada, one to Australia (to visit more relations), and two short trips to Warsaw to visit me is I think the full extent of her flying since then.  Mum grew to, if not love it, at least to enjoy flying, and went back to Canada every other year until she died.....she was planning another trip to Ottawa when her cancer was discovered and died three months later, still insisting she was going to spend her 80th birthday with her brother.

But the 747 was cool.  There was room to move around, in-flight movies, bigger and more comfortable seats.  The top deck was even laid out as a bar, complete with little round cocktail tables, bar-stools and a row of optics.  And this was not a flag carrying national airline but a charter company......  Flying was a pleasure then.

I went back a couple of years later, with a mate of mine, but it wasn't the same somehow. I haven't been back since. My auntie and uncle are both dead and I've lost touch with my cousins.....I hope they're well. They may not realise just how much they helped me and my sister, and especially mum, through that awful time of loss.


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There followed more years at home, in sunny England.  I didn't drive then, so apart from catching the bus to work and being ferried around by my mates to football (or cricket) matches, and from pub to club and back again, via some really cool discos (this was in the 70s remember, they were all the rage - but I was no John Travolta) that was it the travel stakes. 

Then a mate of mine came into the pub one evening and announced he'd been to Thomas Cooks at lunchtime and found a really good value holiday - 10 days in Majorca - did anyone fancy going with him?  I was half pissed already (this was after dad died, and I was still in my drunk phase) so I said sure, why not.  A couple of others in the gang were up for it too, so we went......an early package holiday (but that will be the subject for another day).

Then nothing more until my first marriage and honeymoon in Jersey.  We flew Dan Air London, another now defunct airline, both trips in old Hawker Siddeley turboprop planes.  Outbound was uneventful, but the return a nightmare.  We took off in a thunderstorm, and it was terrifying - I've never been so scared in my life!  We lifted off, not enough speed, dropped, bounced and staggered into the air again, barely clearing the boundary fence.  The airport there is close to the cliff edge, and we were still very low and wobbling badly as we cleared the edge and luched out over the Channel.  After that it got better, although there was turbulance the whole way, until we reached Gatwick.  It was pissing with rain there, too, and as we landed the plane skidded and went a good 30 yards down the runway almost sideways before the pilot regained control and aqauplaned the rest of the way in.  Without a doubt my worst travel experience.

A month later, the very plane we flew back in was taking off from an airport in the Shetlands, again in filthy weather, and again from an airstrip that ended at a cliff edge......and this time it didn't manage to lift.  It crashed into the sea.  50 killed.

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The following year we went to Majorca again, with my ex-sister-in-law and her boyfriend.  It was a nice enough  holiday, memorable only for my learning to swim at last.  I had nearly drowned three times when I was a kid, and it left me with a lifelong fear of deep water.  To this day, I'm not too happy in deep water and panic if I get out of my depth.  But on this trip, the sea was warm and shallow, and we spent a lot of time messing around with a frisbee just in the sea.  The others continually threw it just beyond my reach, into deeper water where I would be forced to flounder after it to retrieve it before it washed away.  After a couple of days of this I could swim, after a fashion......but it's taken me over 30 years to gain any real confidence in the water.  Swimming daily in the pool here in Trinidad has done wonders for my confidence.  I'll never be a Mark Spitz, but at least I can enjoy myself now, with my kids, without hitting the panic button when my feet can't touch bottom.

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Money got tight after that.  With kids and not the best paid job in the world, travel became the 7:30 from High Brooms to Cannon Street and the 6:05 home in the evening.   Plus train rides to visit family at weekends (I was still not driving).  Overseas trips were non existant.  I had one business trip to Luxembourg and Brussels that was quite enjoyable - it featured a first class train journey from Luxembourg to Brussels as there were no flights - but apart from that, no, I was strictly stay at home.

Eventually I managed to pass my test, and that opened doors.  We had annual holidays in Cornwall that were always a joy.  One year we went to Wales for a change.  But it was still small fry, really.  I changed jobs, and stated working for a German bank, and had regular visits to Frankfurt.  This is when my Travelling Life really kicked off - I got used to airports, hotel rooms, finding good places to eat on my own.  I began to realise that there were places and people beyond the English Channel that were worth visiting and appreciating, different cultures.....

Another job change, and I found myself on the road even more.  My company, a small start-up venture that ultimately failed, entered into partnership with an oufit in Paris so I had regular trips on Eurostar there and back.  I also had to do some additional journeys marketing the scheme we were developing, so the business capitals came onto my agenda - Madrid, Vienna, Zurich, Amsterdam, back to Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Brussels.  It was a great job, but only lasted about 18 months before the company failed.  But it gave me two things.

First was the realisation that I really did want to travel, as much as possible.  And if I could find a job that let me do that AND picked up the bills that would be cool.

Second was the confidence to stand up in front of groups of people and do a good, effective presentation.  I found I enjoyed it, especially the sometimes lively Q&A sessions that followed.

I started scouring the job market.  After a few months (this was just before the Millenium) I landed a job with a banking software company I had never heard of before.  The job sounded ideal - I would travel, I would be able to the presntation stuff (so that was two boxes ticked and was building on the skills I had picked up in the previous job).  And it would put to use everything I had learned in the previous 30 years in banking.

We haggled.  I asked for what I felt was a decent wedge (the same as my start up mob had paid me).  They offered me considerably less.  I turned them down.  My then wife went berserk.  They came back to me with an improved offer - still not what I'd asked before, but I did my sums and it was acceptable. 

11 years later, I'm still there. 

Still travelling.

Travellin Bob.