Serendipity: reflections on an unplanned career.


Should you stumble across my blog and begin to wonder who on Earth could write such stuff, here are a few biographical details about the author, explaining everything and nothing.

I cannot remember any major turning point in my life that involved pre-planning and conscious decision making. Everything just seemed to happen, either on a whim or with the feeling that, since what is about to happen is inevitable, lets just go with the flow.

I have a theory that I am the sum total of all the people I have bumped into along the way - my family and friends. This would include Long Suffering Wife, of course, and Daughter No.1 and Daughter No.2. (It was only after years and years of looking after this pair that someone told me that I could give them away!)

The friends who, according to my theory, bear the burden of responsibility for making me the man I am today, begin with Oldest And Dearest, who is actually a distant relative I have known all my life. There are Old University Friends 1 and 2, who know things about me known to none other, Former Colleagues from my days in East Africa and a Fellow Sufferer who shared the burdens of more recent employment. These are not of course the only influences on my life, but these, should I happen to refer to them in my future scribblings, are far less likely to sue.

Having got from the end of the Second World War to the present without much conscious effort or attempt to achieve any particular outcome, it might seem unfair that I have always felt reasonably happy. I draw no profound conclusion from this except, perhaps, that  it is better not to know where we are going.