I was born in Croydon and brought up in Liverpool where my childhood and schooling was fun - I even gained some GCEs. Then around the age of sixteen, I found myself in the Cavern club where the enthusiasm and bare-faced cheek of our local pop groups, (they weren't bands until the mid-seventies), gave me a confidence I could never gain in school. By the early sixties, a few close friends and I had formed our own group and we became, The Pikkins.

 But deep down I never really felt at home in the city and inevitably the time came when I left the group and moved to Cornwall and found work wherever I could - in jobs such as Insurance Salesman; DJ; Barman; Waiter; Bistro Chef; Diving Boat's Cook; Restaurant Chef; Local Council Courier; Manager of Art College Bar; Teaching Assistant, Census Agent and Mobile Library Assistant.

Then something happened that started me travelling again.   

It was an invitation from a long-time friend made a dozen years earlier while playing on the US bases. He suggested I visit him in Southern California. The name of this chum is John Nippolt. He's a husband, father, surfer, painter, writer, teacher and fellow time-traveller who shares the same curiosity about life as I do myself. Naively, I bought a one-way ticket then spent several months backpacking through California and Hawaii and subsequently fell in love with travelling.

But it was Greece that had my eye. From my first visit, years before, I had became so enthralled by all things Hellenic I knew it as my true destination. I had to be there...in that place...that very place.

  Then, one winter's night just before my fiftieth birthday, hunched over a couple of beers with my bezzie mate Norman, he suggested we take a year off and go travelling in Europe. And so, one bright morning the following spring, after a sacrifice to the gods, we boarded my 'Villa Zorbus' and, the wind being favourable, set off intending to aim for Hungary. From the stern of a channel ferry, we watched the isles of Britain fade into the distance and so turned to get some rest, unaware the gods had other ideas. From distant Greece the Sirens song pulled us from Cornwall, through France and Italy, from Brindisi across the Adriatic to Igoumenitsa over the Pindos and up to Thessaloniki, then by ferry down to Crete where we landed just after midnight. Somehow we found ourselves parked outside the legendary Villa Ariadne, and once the engine was still, we soundly slept in the resin-scented car park. And all at once I could breathe again.

The following year I returned to the island and worked the season until I could stay no longer. I just had to leave.
Cooking in a Cretan kitchen can induce madness, as anyone will tell you.

But there's a saying in Greece,
"Just when things are at their worst, suddenly you are consoled from an unexpected direction."

One morning, out of the blue, came an invitation to join a friend working with underprivileged kids in Hungary. I could hardly believe it. That same day I sold my beloved camper and flew off for what was to become one of the most positive and enlivening three months of my life. When it was time to come home I discovered I'd lost my return ticket but those gods were still watching and helped me hitch a ride back on the pillion of a Yamaha 1200 through Austria, Germany, Luxembourg until eventually reaching Oostende on the coast of Belgium. Then by ferry across the Channel to Brighton and finally, the bus back down to Cornwall.