| It's a real-time autobiography that grows as the years go by 2003 |
| "life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kierkegaard 1813-1855) |
| 4 life |
| 4 2003 4 Message |
| 4 me |
| 4 travel |
| 4 music |
| 4 books |
| Last updated: Sunday, 21 December, 2003 |
| Chapter Three Part III South Wales 2003 I moved to Swansea in August 2002 and after living for a month in university halls, moved into a house in Marlborough Road with Leon, Eva, Aoife and Annie. I worked at the Neath Guardian newspaper as a trainee reporter. |
| inside Ian's Website you will find... life is a real-time autobiography that grows as the years go by me is a name i call myself travel is from the outback to the arctic circle journalist is what i try to do but i can't hack it music is the food of love but you probably think i'm on a pretty poor diet books is what you should be reading and main index is where everything begins a bit like genesis |
| Ian's Christmas message to Britain and the Commonwealth |
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| Hello, Seeing as its the end of another year, I'd thought I'd write to you and let you know what I'm up to these days. Some of you will already know much of this and so will probably want to delete this now, while others I haven't spoken to for the best part of half a decade will have hoped you'd heard the last of me. Sorry. Well, I'm living in Swansea and have been for the past 18 months or so. I lived with students for a year trying to find my feet in this strange country which is so near and yet so far. A year of student-living, too many parties and unprofessional behaviour took its toll and I'm now living on a farm overlooking the Brecon Beacons with two blokes who work in the Forestry Commission and the Countryside Council for Wales respectively. From one extreme to the other. I met them through doing a Spanish GCSE at nightschool. I'm going to fail the exam miserably as I don't think I have the necessary dedication to learn all the vocabulary these days but it makes a nice change on a Monday night after work. Still working at the wonderful Neath and Port Talbot Guardian as a reporter writing about basically anything that comes along - from murders and fatal road accidents to 100-year birthdays. Narrowly missed being made redundant due to "streamlining" implemented by our head office at Canary Wharf. Having fun there though, and I take my exams in May, which also involves going to Newcastle and showing a panel of editors examples of my work over the past couple of years and trying to pretend I know what I'm talking about. If I pass that then I can start looking for another job, hopefully in a more "newsy" area. If the right job came up then I would stay in Wales, but failing that I could be anywhere in Britain again this time next year. I still don't know whether I will stay in this profession forever as there are certain aspects of it which still trouble me (knocking on doors of dead children's families, the ruthlessness of the industry as a whole, etc.) and I miss using my languages and want to work abroad in the not-too-distant future. But it's fun for the time being. |
| Ian addresses the nation from Buckingham Palace |
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| Where I live - Cefn Betingau Farm |
I've just come back from backpacking across Morocco for a couple of weeks. I was great to be travelling again. I put on my walking boots for the first time since 2000, still stained with the red earth of Australia's farms. Morocco is a hard country to place. There is certainly obvious wealth and a functioning post-colonial infrastructure but much of the place - with its poverty and smells of spice, sewage and petrol fumes - reminded me of India. It was my first taste of Africa but I'm impatient to go back. It was December, in the high 20s and no sign of Christmas, and, in Marrakech, sitting on a roof terrace as the sun went down, as a dozen mosques sung their boisterous, yet tuneful, call to prayer, you felt a long, long way from home. Rode a camel across the Sahara for the first time since one maliciously broke my hip four years ago and came away unscathed this time around, you'll be pleased to know. (However I did almost fracture my skull while running naked away from two rather fat Moroccan pursuers, but more of that another time perhaps). I also successfully managed to find myself on a not-quite-official bus full of Moroccan smugglers because I thought it would save time. Six hours into the journey - and two hours after it had been standing empty in the middle of nowhere because the military had ransacked the vehicle and arrested its passengers - I realised I'd made a mistake. Time goes by very quickly these days and after going to three weddings this summer it makes you realise we're all growing up. Thanks to Mike, Sean and Becky for getting married and for putting on such a good show. I look forward to hearing all your news soon. Best wishes, Ian |
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| My trip to Morocco saw me on the lookout for camels |
| This is one I didn't fall off |