Goodbye Buckinghamshire. The residence of single-sex grammar schools and the doyenne of baking, Mary Berry. A shared name with the royalty of the Monarch’s finest palace. And the playground of our beautiful and loving red fox Labrador, Monty.
And farewell London. How could I forget you. You have been my urban abode for half of my life. Menacing and vibrant with a volatile mixture of youth and tradition. The grandest and greatest city in the world, for which I have an everlasting love.
Goodbye, but why. I knew my tennis career was over a year ago, at the age of 27. To my misguided delight, I’d successfully hit three consecutive first serves to my coach, Mr Dragomir. Now, Mr Dragomir, a Bulgarian, renown for their honesty and directness, remarked with rather blasphemous and obscene language that my serve was feeble and frail. Alas, I left Kennington Park humiliated with my dreams in tatters as Mr Dragomir ravaged a community grown Spring flower-bed of cherry blossoms.
So it wasn’t to be tennis. And I’d decided it wasn’t going to a continuation of my riveting career in Finance (my incestuous relationship with Balance Sheets had become a point of concern across the Profession). But it was about timing. Life had presented an opportunity. With no existing commitments and a luxury of desires to pursue, I packed my red suede hat, blue duffle coat, two marmalade sandwiches, and headed for deepest and darkest Peru.
You may have guessed, I am not Paddington Bear. But like Paddington, I often fall victim to intrigue and adventure. I intend to share, with a sprinkle of imagination, a collection of short stories as I rove across the world over the next few months. Highly dependent on not losing my laptop, I wish to write the sheer delights of life and the despairing desolations of our contemporary society. And for the purposes of legal protection, I would like to reiterate, that this will be loosely based on true events.
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