I prefer to view the book as a compendium of life’s experiences and travel adventures, interspersed, wherever appropriate, with liberal amounts of horror and humour. After all, life has its ups and downs; sometimes a bit scary, but often tending towards the hilarious.
I prefer not to see it as an autobiography. That, to my somewhat disrupted mind, is for people who have decided enough is enough: ‘now let’s get it all down for posterity’. That attitude is not for me. I want to fill another book, or two, with life’s turbulent times, before I succumb to that!
But in between the horror and humour, I do hope the reader is able to glean something from the underpinning values of the narrative. That we are all born equal, and despite our circumstance, we each carve out our life, to form a valid story which can be told.
Whether that life is self-determined, or otherwise, is open to conjecture; and just how meaningful it is in the greater universal sense, is also up for grabs.
Please do enjoy the read. Another one is coming soon.
Duncan Gregory, December 2025
Background
Writing for me began in earnest a long way back, when the editor of a tiny newspaper in a remote but extraordinarily beautiful region of Australia, asked me to contribute a weekly column. The task didn’t pay anything and it often kept me awake late into the night, on the day before the due date … but I loved it!
There was a lull of a decade or so before I grew into the area of Global Education and began to devise, write and edit, newsletters for general consumption and magazines for schools. This was in the days of the literal form of copy-paste, and I recall one time when a posse of kids got high on art glue, while putting together the artwork for a national schools magazine.
Soon after the glue-sniffing incident (by strange coincidence) I began to write poems. The sniffing stopped, but the verses kept coming, until today. I liken poetry to a fine-art version of prose: so much inspiration and emotion compacted into just a few lines.
Work led me to Asia, back to Europe and then to Africa; joining the dots, as it were, as I tried to add my tiny little bit to an understanding of different perspectives, within and between these regions. This related to social and environmental issues, and in the last decade or so, to the onrushing climate crisis.
Covid-19, for all its negatives, gave me one important positive: time alone to pull together the writing already there, whilst adding more and editing the composite whole. My main regret is that I did not make the time to do it sooner.
I hope that you as the reader can enjoy the experience with me.
And if you do feel the urge, please do respond with comments and questions.
Duncan Gregory
Malindi, Kenya.
