Tony's Life and Times

Whilst living in China, I came to the conclusion that somewhere in the darkest depths of the local government of Beijing there was a bureaucrat who was grossly under employed. As we all know, any bureaucrat who finds himself with no real work to do, will quickly invent jobs for himself. There is some natural law about this, I just cant bring its name to mind just now.... but it has to do with the survival of this particular species (Bureaucraticus underemployedius). A number of local regulations came into effect which were hard to explain using logic as a starting point.    To wit:- All taxi drivers had to wear ochre shirts and rather startling striped ties. No dogs taller than 25 cms at the shoulder might live within the part of Beijing defined by the fourth ring road. All shops had to have identical letter type and sized name boards above their shops. Furthermore, a concerted attempt was made to wipe out one of the most creative and enjoyable uses...

While in China, one holiday we went on a trip to Xin Jiang Province, which is in the extreme north west of China, bordering on Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia (see map below). Map of China in which Xin Jiang is the ochre bit at the top left of China. Lotty had gone a week earlier than I could, as her work schedule was different to mine.  She had been on a long walk in the mountains in the east of Xin Jiang, and I joined her and the others of her walking group in Kashgar. I flew from Beijing to Kashgar a day after I stopped work, and went to the hotel where the other members of the small group we were going to be with for a few days were staying, and left my mobile in the taxi too, damn it! Never got it back either, rotten taxi driver!!!!!!! The next morning, bright and early we climbed into a small bus and headed out to the Karakorum Highway, an amazing piece of recent civil engineering that joins China to Pakistan over the heig...

After spending a year in Angola, which sadly ended with us falling foul of the Director and Principle of the school (two of the most unpleasant people I have ever met), it was obvious that we would have to move on. Part of our falling foul of those two involved me storming into the Director's office and gently informing him that if he didn't stop hassling Lotty I would deck him - meaning every word I said, which he, sensibly, believed. Lotty managed to get herself work in a new international school in Beijing (Beijing City International School) so we left Angola and did a totally ludicrous trip around the world, going to Australia, followed by going to France, and then England, and then Holland and then to China.   I got the feeling we spent the entire summer holiday in airports and planes - but we did manage to see a lot of good friends and family in between the planes happily, and duly arrived in Beijing. Having spent a part of my childhood in Singapore, and hav...

On what was intended to be a pleasant day's sail out of Newhaven with Lotty, myself and a friend from the Roundhouse, Mike Waterman, all aboard Mjojo, we found ourselves in serious danger of being thrown onto the rocks and drowning. Before setting out, we had (of course) listened to the shipping weather forecast, which promised us reasonably strong winds and clear visibility.  So, we cast off from the inner harbour of Newhaven (which for you non-Brits, is a fishing port on the south coast of England) and set out for a pleasant day on the English Channel. Obviously not us in this photo (we were rather too busy to take any photos), but it gives you an idea of what it was like. After about an hour's enjoyable sailing straight out to sea, the weather began to change, the wind getting stronger and stronger.  I listened to the shipping forecast again, and it was now telling me that we were about to be enveloped in a Force 12 to 14 storm.   Hmmmmm....... ...

While we were in Angola, I kept a blog in which I described more or less everything we did, saw and experienced in that extra-ordinary country.   So rather than rehash it all here in this blog, I have decided to simply post the link to that older blog, so if you are interested in what we did and saw while in Angola, you can read it all there.   Probably more interestingly too, as I wrote it all as it was happening to us. So here is the link to that blog:- http://tony-lotty-at-large.blogspot.com.au/ I hope you find it interesting and even a bit enjoyable.  It was a very profound experience for us both in so many ways!

When we arrived in Angola, the civil war that had been raging in that country for about 30 years had just ended with the shooting to death of Savimbi – the leader of one of the three waring factions, (UNITA) and a sort of uneasy peace was being observed by all the various parties to that terrible war. The end of Savimbi, and thus of the war It had started as a war of independence against the Portuguese who had colonised the country in the late 19 th century, and then once they had gone, it turned into yet another of those wars in which the USSR and the USA fought each other using surrogate armies. In this case it was the Cubans being the strong arm of the Russians, and the South Africans doing the USA's dirty work for them. The net result of all of this was a country that had an estimated 17 million land mines scattered around and endless shot up towns and villages, and a more or less totally destroyed infrastructure. Vast numbers of war injured people and an inte...

Way back in the late 50's of the last century (my God that makes me feel ancient!!!) I became involved in the Ban the Bomb movement in a very active way, which led to one or two rather curious and in one case, deeply disturbing experiences. I attended the inaugural public meeting of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) which took place at Central Hall Westminster I seem to recall. The organisers had hoped for a reasonable turn out for this meeting, but the numbers who pitched up caught them completely off guard. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there, way too many for the hall, so it was all held up for a while as they hurriedly arranged a big PA system so that the overflow outside on the street could hear what was being said inside the hall. Anyhow, one of the decisions taken in that meeting was to adopt what is now universally recognised as the Peace Symbol, the circle with the upside down “Y” inside it, and also to set up an annual march between Londo...