‘The written word will remain, that’s true;
but it won’t be much comfort to me’.

Christopher Hitchens

The book recounts a range of experiences over time, including a number of death-defying near fatalities, which I now look back to with a degree of disbelief. But in addition, much of the book revolves around travel, often relating to work, but sometimes purely to unadulterated pleasure. For example, from Australia there are numerous tales of airborne exploits: rural escapades with the pilot on my  knee, then alongside another aviator - my boss - who suddenly tells me:

             “You take over, I feel like a nap.”
             “Hello! What the hell does that mean?” My initial muted response.

But my ever-extending lifespan includes many ups and downs. Those sky-high adventures ended with vivid memories of our six-seater plane in free-fall, heading towards shark-infested seas. More local examples include a high-speed car crash near Kericho, then quite recently, coming face-to-face with Al-Shabaab in Westgate.

To even the score, excursions into the education world of India, plus a variety of accounts from Europe and South-East Asia, can re-emerge as extraordinarily happy times. I vividly remember a 15-year-old schoolgirl, in the orange-suited robes of a famous freedom fighter, confronting me, the supposed colonial ruler, on the podium; and still feel a lump in my throat if I recall her 4,000 schoolmates that day, in the multi-coloured attire of the Telugu community, standing in unison to sing their national anthem.

         “Who is that girl?”, I asked the principal, sitting alongside me.
         “Oh, that’s Jaya, our head girl. Would you like to meet her?”

The narrative abounds with many such accounts, as I traverse a meandering path across four continents, spread over five decades, and encompassing three careers. Coursing to some degree under the surface, I searched for meaning. Some reason for those near-fatalities; and indeed, whether our stories are worth telling at all, considering our miniscule time as an itinerant in this enormous universe. With that in mind, I end the text with a perceptive quote from the late Christopher Hitchens - a long-admired writer - who said shortly before his death: ‘The written word will remain, that’s true; but it won’t be much comfort to me’.

WHITTLING OUR NICHE from the tree of life. Available in paperback from the publisher Austin Macauley, Amazon, or as an e-book.