| I spent all of my working life as an installation engineer installing knitting machines throughout the world which meant 40 years of my life I spent 9 months every year away from home. So when people talk to me about overseas holidays I am just not interested because now I am retired I just want to stop at home.
I started overseas travelling 1952/54 when Heathrow airport was no more than a glorified Nissan hut, in those early days I remember taking a flight to France on a Dan-Air plane where they had crates of chickens down one side of the isle and passengers down the other side. Of course this was before mass media holiday travel and jet aircraft but when travelling by BOAC the long distance airline then we were treated like royalty.
Even though most of my life was spent working overseas I always managed to get home for Christmas except in 1956 when the Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to quell a political uprising and under the circumstances I could not get a flight home.
Although I saw the world at the firms expense it was not a perfect job for everybody because I never had the joy and experience of seeing my children grow up and many of the locations were in the industrial parts of the country but looking back on the good things in life I did enjoy working in Mauritius on three occasions, I suppose I worked in 28 to 30 countries throughout the world and passed through many more on transit which means although I am not very good at computers I am top marks in geography.
Submitted by Dinky
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