Namibia, Foreign Lands and People

Why should I, an unknown person, write an autobiography? I have done so because my life was full of adventures, strange experiences and amusing anecdotes such as my playing a Jessica Fletcher role to solve a crime in a hotel in the Algarve, Portugal. I did not go through the normal routine of childhood, school, study and job but wandered rather waywardly around the world doing various jobs such as cleaning offices at five in the morning, starting in a remote African village and going to various European countries.

The book is also full of historical events, unintentional sociology of human behaviour and interesting people I met. It starts with an African childhood where I suffered from the racist White and Black frictions and then proceeds to my studies in South Africa and then to Paris. I went to France to study French but mainly because I wanted to read French poetry. From there I went on to stays with my German family, to studies in London, to Lisbon and then to Verona, Italy where I now live, all these stages packed with strange and bizarre experiences. For example, what happened to me as a gay Teacher in Reading, how I got innocently drawn into a delinquent group in Verona but managed to extricate myself safe and sound, how an American poetess got me to call myself an 'anarchist' for a while, what happened when I became a bar pianist in Portugal and so on.