About the Author
Part Two
Naturally, it didn’t all happen at once. I was a police cadet for two years. In fact I was one of Britain’s first police cadets, number 9, with the number on my lapel, a member of Birmingham City Police. They used to move us cadets around from department to department, spending four months in each. By the time I was 18 I worked in the coroner’s office next to the morgue. I hadn’t seen all that much of life, but death I’d met. Then I joined the RAF, where they taught me to fly the first generation of jet fighters. I flew Meteors at advanced flying school, then Vampires. Pilots are taught meteorology and in my time every flying day began with a “met briefing”. That was my introduction to the subject. The weather matters to pilots and in those days we didn’t have radar that allowed us to land without being able to see the runway. If fog or very low cloud moved over the airfield while you were airborne you had to find somewhere else to land and you usually had very little fuel left. So you paid attention to the weather!
When I left the RAF my gratuity helped pay for me to go to drama school and I became an actor. I spent a year with a children’s theatre touring Scotland and the North of England, then worked in weekly repertory companies all over the place. I understudied in The Mousetrap, worked at the Mermaid Theatre in Puddle Dock, and even had a small part in Doctor Who.
Out of work actors do all kinds of things to pay the rent. I had a friend who got a job putting sand into egg-timers. Early in 1964 I found a temporary job with an organisation that was concerned with the environment and organic farming. The subject caught my attention and I stayed for several years, becoming deeply involved with the emerging environmental movement. I wrote for an environmentalist magazine for a time. Since 1973 I’ve been a freelance writer.
As you see, I’m still writing about the environment, but these days I see things differently. It’s the science that interests me, not environmentalist campaigning. Environmentalism and environmental science often disagree and for my money the science is a lot more interesting.
So I don’t believe the world is about to come to an end. I don’t think we’re poisoning ourselves and the damage we cause can be repaired. We have a future and, in my view, we should not be afraid of it. You won’t find ecodoom in my books.
So why not dip into one of my books to see how you like it? Click on a title here and you’ll find yourself magicked all the way to Amazon. Tell me what you think of it and if you can suggest ways to improve it for its next edition, please let me know. I take all such suggestions seriously and I’m very glad to receive them.
If you’d like me to write a book for you,
you need only ask. You’ll have to ask me directly,
though, because I don’t have a literary agent.
Part
One>
