Foreword

This saga is the nicest, most fantastic, touching story you’ll ever read about near death experience, gross wastage of public resources, and mass paranoia.

Everything, in fact, that makes life worth living.

Both startling and poignant, this candid portrait of an Australian educationist combines elements of autobiography, humour and drama.

He’s a man with many connections-and disconnections.

It is a  epic story of his grooming, life and work.

A canny evocation of the time period and atmosphere.

 The educationist wraps his story’s laces around the lore of culture and history, mixing life and art into a colourful collage.

He fixes his gaze on his former self, following him over the course of seventy seven years, from 1946 to the present day, recounting his ups and downs in league with major domestic and global events.

Thematically layered, his saga ranges widely over politics, culture, ideology and history  .

It explores themes of childhood friendships, love, greed, betrayal, loss and broken relationships.

It  represents an earnest moral inquiry distinguished by offbeat humour and magical social realism.

With an unfailing eye for place, décor, costume, and gesture, your man glides his keyboard through tangles of memories.

Mocking and shocking, teasing and pleasing, he evokes joys and horrors with a similar sense of wonder.

His story  generates laughter and a sense of discomfort in equal doses.

He’s a walking contradiction, mostly truth and partly fiction.

His world is peopled by competing forces: some constructive, others destructive, all determined to shape his destiny.

He reminds us that the personal and the political cannot be safely untangled, that we must position science and politics next to love and procreation.

Journeying through numerous adventures, this everyman  encounters the awesome truth, an array of fascinating characters and many splendoured situations.

Against a backdrop of epochal assets grabbing, the narrative is  punctuated with memorable set-pieces.

It is a fresh, affectionate and minutely observed account of life in the global village which readers can readily assume as part of their heritage.