My Internationalism... 14 4 7 (10) 25 1 22

Yesterday's blog about the Irish in my family, my father being ½ Irish by virtue of two of his Grandparents hailing from Ireland is something one could never have guessed as a child growing up in his absence: his mother also half Irish we used to refer to as "Golda Meir" for she also had wiry black hair and her son my father had a look about him perhaps the hook in his nose which some people likened to maybe a Jewish ancestry, but of course being Irish does not necessarily rule out this possible dimension also..?

All in all it may serve my purpose in explaining the emergence of this growing Internationalism I talk of..! 

Whatever the event the mid-1960s continued to be a time of change: returning to live in UK from one last year in Scandinavia but re-settling not in its northern counties but in Buckinghamshire and enjoying a job where I would travel the UK its length as far as Fort William in the NW and Stoneywood Aberdeen in the NE and breadth as far as Ivy Bridge, Devon in England's SW were concerned on the one hand with more and more International travel as time went by on the other...Then as a playground I had the City of London on my door step. With still something of the North Country bumpkin left in me I recall my luncheons were not spent in the company of my fellow Brits during this period but with a trio of other off-comers in Indian or Pakistani Ted, Turk Ilmas and Iraqi Hikmet: off down the pub in Beaconsfield town centre armed with our 3 shilling luncheon vouchers sufficient to buy a pie and a pint of beer.

Attending night school to top up University entrance requirements with advanced maths and the coveted English Language O-level at High Wycombe College of Further Education was perhaps inspired partly by my lowly status upon joining the company as a HNC qualified Laboratory Assistant aged 25?

And my social life down the “Smoke” (of London) now when I was footloose and fancy-free took a turn backwards when in order to gain admission without a sponsor to a German Club just off Oxford St I pretended to be a visiting Scandinavian friend of mine who hailed from its eastern border with Soviet Russia, an old wartime ally of Germany, and surprise surprise it was here where I would meet my future wife herself a budding Internationalist in the making..? over in England after completing her studies in Scandinavia a fully-fledged nurse, deciding she would visit UK to brush up her English was it her third or fourth language..?

So my love affair with Scandinavia was to receive a fresh shot in the arm and before too long we would be motoring there in our second-hand Morris Minor 1000 our son of 11 months sleeping on the back seats so I could take up a University student’s 3 month summer job in another Pulp and Paper Company which is to say back in industry number 2… Have a good day everyone..?