I start with the tall, dark and handsome Eastern European I share my life and home with. Then come the children we’ve created. Beatrice and Daniel who provide the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life and who are infinitely interesting and challenging.
I spent half my childhood around animals. In the 3rd year of training to be a Drama and English teacher, I looked after a baby lamb which I named Henry Vth Part 2. Henry was born with 'special needs' and my farmer mother had no time to care for him! I took him in a Kenyan basket lined with hay to a lecture on Paternity in Shakespeare’s History Plays. The lamb was dying (so I thought) and I was syringing colostrum into its mouth every two hours, hence taking it everywhere with me. To my horror and delight the first I ever heard this lamb make a sound – was during this lecture. I fled in joy and embarrassment – never to return to what I was sure was an excellent lecture series! Henry lived a full and hearty life until going the way of most self respecting farm animals with unsentimental owners.
So in our back garden I’m rediscovering the delight at being around animals. So far its only three over-cuddled, overfed and definately pet, not farm - Dutch rabbits. There is something magic about them.
Many of the photographs on this blogsite are mine. Alongside my photography is a curiosity for other cultures and countries. Check out the section on professional experience to get a flavour for the places I’ve seen and worked in.
This one is the wonderful Finnish stories of the Moomins by Tove Janson. These creatures lived close to nature and were infinately tolerant of diversity. Moominpappa and Moominmamma are the perfect parents – supporting gently Moomintroll's need for adventure. Many characters are on the verge of melancholy. The characters ponder life and ways of the world. My two special favourites are Snufkin who comments on freedom, “One can never be entirely free, if one admires someone else too much." And Little My who comments, "Possession means worries and luggage bags one has to drag along." She stares down at me in my office, looking as she always does – rather cross.
Music favourites include Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble’s album Mnemosyne, Irish and Canadian folk music (Dubliners, The Be Good Tanyas and the Waterboys), Baroque choral music, Bach, Villa Lobos’ Bachanias, Sibelius, Mahler, ‘old pop’ (like REM and Dire Straits) and cheesy pop (I wont go into it!). A key track for me in my life is , Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. I used to sing this with what I called ‘the University Class’ of Vietnamese language students living in very tough conditions in Chi Ma Wan, one of Hong Kong’s closed refugee camps in the mid 80's.
My last enthusiasm is for those rare international development people who live what they do not by inventing or adhering to complicated development theory BUT simply being present and listening. If only they could be cloned. You know who you are.
