About Me

My background is in sailing and business. Sailing was my rite of passage to the wider world of work. The rite was more in evidence when crossing the equator (or ‘the Line’) for the first time. To mark the crossing, as tradition has it, a bucket of ice-cold water is thrown over your head, or my head in this case. Eating a raw fish and crawling under a lowly-raised bar in a set time (‘the Line’ again) were some of the things you were also asked to do as part of the initiation. It was good fun. Work on board was round the clock. Rough seas admonished us somehow. There was never a dull moment. It was never a question of not turning up for work, I was there and so were the other chaps. It was never a question of a half-baked job, a shoddy and rash piece of work. A job had to be done. Properly. Always. A Job Jobbed was our sailors’ motto. Subsequently I ran a translation business, and the same essential skills were transferred to this newer working environment. Here, the rite of passage was assimilated in the work routine. The clock ticked in the usual way, but something was not quite the same. The deadline for the translation of documents, reports and specifications, as requested by the customer, was always ‘yesterday’! How quaint! Our response and the response of the translation fraternity was equally odd – it was to ask ‘when yesterday?’ Well, those were the days. You always go with the flow. Here jobs were to fit a ‘window’; tasks and targets were set; invoices were sent out and filed away; everything revolved around schedules and deadlines. The things to do. Like docking and weighing anchor. A sense of duty and responsibility prevailed.

I now qualify myself as a food writer and tutor covering the ‘often overlooked dimension’ of food to our understanding of the way we live and work. If collectively we have overlooked this dimension, is it not time now we do something about it? Time to get this right? Should duty and responsibility not be our mottos? Can we fast-track food? Do we know what bestows meaning to Life? The line to cross is still the same – it is the goals we set for ourselves. In short, with my work I invite participation in all things food, and in the setting up of food and learning centres.

I am the author of Divided by Words a book that highlights our wrestling with words. We are poor word handlers and this shows up in impaired communication.

Affiliations:

• Permaculture https://www.permaculture.org.uk/ 
• Douglas Social Credit http://socialcredit.schooljotter2.com/