The New Adventure.

Arrived back in England yesterday at 6.40 am, it was wet and cold. Actually I would have been disappointed if it had been anything else. So far my expectations on my return after fifteen years have been exceeded. The next part of the adventure has begun.

I have returned to same street I left when I was sixteen years old. To live with my first girlfriend who lived in the same street and lives there now. Left at 16 return just before I'm 60, "FULL CIRCLE, like a bad penny!" Good title for a book, watch this space. Thank you Jan for your input on the title.

It was a wonderful journey home from my idyllic beach in the Philippines. After spending the better part of two weeks saying my farewells to the many good friends I had made over the last year.

As I knew I would suffer from jet-lag from the 18 to 20 hours of flight, this time I was prepared and practised some EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) to combat the stress of jet-lag. Thankfully they worked with the aid of catnapping throughout the journey and during the first twenty four hours after landing.

As is my schedule I was up at around 2 am this morning, chatting to my many friends around the world. It's surprising the effects flashbacks can have on a persons emotions. I spent the first hour talking to my friend Susan, in Zhoucun China. During a ten minute break at the end of the conversation and with a mug of my favourite Chinese tea. I stepped outside to have a quick fag, standing at the gate and looking at the house which for the time being was going to be my new home. Having another thought, must use that EFT to stop smoking.

With no rhyme or reason I felt an urge to look up and there before me was the plough in all it's glory.



The first constellation I could recognise from when I was a small boy living in that street. I seemed to know instinctively where it would be. This then led to the next flashback of a lecture I attended when I was about twelve years old, these lectures were held each month in a village hall in Heaton Moor but the one that stuck out in my mind was the one done by one of my boyhood hero's Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore. Two and half hours of passion from an amateur astronomy, his talks and television program the Sky at Night were part of my early education. Which demonstrated to me that if you have a passion for a subject it was so much easier to learn. My passion in life has been life itself added to travel and meeting people.

As I look back over the (nearly) sixty years of life, I have fulfilled that passion. Lets hope the next forty years as I head towards my next big ambition, the telegram can be just as fulfilling.

Stephen
The Nomadic Romantic English Gentleman

Walk in the Park

Back in my last few months in China, I went for a early morning walk. The reason was to take a set of photographs of a park in the autumnal sunrise. It was a beautiful morning and the photos I took came out better than I than expected. Oh! Yea of little faith.

At last I have managed to combine Picasa, Blogger, Google maps and g-mail accounts to show the photographs, a very steep learning curve. The idea was to display the photos with a story attached.

Picasa Albums Link

Google Maps Link

I hope you enjoy and comments would be appreciated and if you really feel benevolent you can add you name as a follower.

Thank you and keep smiling.

Stephen

Erica's Adventure in the Philippines.

Since coming to the Philippines back in April this year, it has been to say the least hectic. Notwithstanding the local weather conditions and the horrendous typhoons that have plagued the Philippines over the last six months causing death and destruction. Both in Manila where I shared the house with the four Chinese nurses and the house I rented here in Subic Bay were hit twice with flooding. Luckily we only lost personal effects and nobody was injured and once the cleaning up was done we could carry on with our lives.

About two and half years ago I met a young Chinese girl who communicated through Skype. This happens frequently but young Erica has stood the test of time. Most of the people who contacted me in this way just want to practise their English and being an obliging by nature I do my best to help and nurture there requests.

In March I was on a trip back to the UK to see family, friends and also to attend a re-union with guys I joined the Royal Marines with way, way back in 1966. It had been in some cases 42 years since we had seen each other but what a weekend we had catching up on the years that had past.

From Left to Right Judd Barker, Titch Blake, Alan Drennan, John Nicholson, Pat Clarey and of course myself.

What a right motley bunch of plebeians we made, then and now. It really was an awe inspiring

weekend which hopefully we can repeat again in the future.

From that weekend alone Alan Drennan came on a ten day visit here to Manila and Subic Bay to finish some unanswered conversations we had during the weekend. I certainly benefited from his visit is so many ways and I have the feeling it won't be his last visit.

It was the weekend after the reunion and I was visiting my daughter (Kezia) in London. Who had just moved into a house with her new boyfriend James.

I t was wonderful to see my daughter again and I was greatly impressed with young James. Finally, at last, was Kezia going to throw off her mantle of spinsterhood, after the few short hours in their company the unspoken thought crossed my mind. I was to be proved right a month or so in the future when James sent me a message through Facebook of his intentions and asked my permission to marry her. Which I rightly granted with no reservations whatsoever.

It was the Sunday morning and James had gone of to Wales to do some sea fishing with friends. Kezia and I had just finished breakfast and we were both piggy-backing on somebodies WIFI connection. When Erica popped up on Skype from Beijing,

"Stephen how's Zhoucun, China?" She asked.

"Fine I hope but I'm in London staying with my daughter." I replied.

"So you've left China?" She asked.

"No! In fact I will be passing through Beijing on Thursday night." I said.

"Anything I can help you with?"

"I need a hotel and railway ticket."

So that was how I got to meet Erica for the first time, she was waiting in Beijing for me when I arrived and took me to the hotel she had booked for me and had the railway ticket all organised.

We had lunch together the following day, with Lilly a friend from Zhoucun and then she saw me off at the new Beijing Railway Station.

We had spent roughly two years talking occasionally on Skype and she always impressed me with her standard of English but what really stood out was her intelligent questions.

She asked if I would come to Beijing again before I went to the Philippines and I managed to fit in two weekends before I came here. The last one being my last weekend in China.

We had two really beautiful weekends together and I found that being in her company and visiting some of the sights of Beijing, for want of a better word joyful. Not felt like that in years.

We carried on the connection most nights, just chatting away on-line with Skype. It was through the French Family another set of connections that I had made here in the Philippines. That a germ of an idea was forming in my head, another one of those crazy Black plans.

I knew Erica's birthday was 11th June, so the night before I told her my plan.

Would you like to come and study for a MBA in business administration and I would take care of all the details.

Ten minutes silence.

To say the least she was shocked and couldn't give me a definite answer and in fact took a further few days before I got a maybe.

Once the ball got rolling everything went sort of well, it wasn't without it's hiccups. Permission from the family was required visa's to be arranged, flight to organise. Originally she should have arrived on the 1st October we had to change that because of the typhoons, I talked about earlier.

Thankfully she arrived three hours adrift on the 1st of November, tired but happy to be in another country.

The rest off the story and photographs are here on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=133038&id=630730682&l=3370450281

Comments on my writing would be appreciated and would give me guidance for the future.

Stephen

The Nomadic Romantic English Gentleman

Introduction

How does one introduce oneself to the world, especially considering:-

1. It's your first time, a newbie to Blogging.
   
2. Your racing towards sixty at a rapid rate of knots.
3. Do you really have anything interesting to say?

I really did try my best when completing the profile page, although in a sense somewhat cryptically and I did try to add some humour and romance.

I'm still left with the difficult of trying to explain who I am.

Let's try it with labels:-

• Ex-school boy
• Ex-Royal Marine
• Ex-husband twice
• Ex-father four times
• Ex-Printer
• Ex-Prudential Salesman (Bicycle clips and all)
• Ex-Teacher

To me adding labels to oneself or to other people doesn't really work. With the labels and profile we are still looking at it cryptically.

What we need is a real genuinely in depth view of who a person is, with a tad of perspective just to add a little colour to it.

A Blog, I'll write a blog telling the world who I am.

My first consideration was what to call it, it had to be representative as to who I am. It took rather a long time to come up with the title in five words. If you have ever received an e-mail from me you will find it after my name. I've been writing them since I was instructed in how to set up an e-mail account way back in 1998.

So my next question is what can you expect from this Blog, it's going to be a long one. I'm close to sixty and I've forward planned so to speak. That my next and hopefully final ambition is to get the telegram of His/Her Majesty, if my maths is still working that gives me roughly forty years. Get rather a lot of scribbling down in that time.

That should be enough to wet anyones appetite,. Comments would be most welcoming and if there is not to many you will receive a reply back. I'll sign off now.

God Bless and Angels On Your Pillow.

Stephen

The Nomadic Romantic English Gentleman