Hurry up and Wait

The next random box of slides out of the box belongs to Australia. I'm pretty sure that these are iron ore mines. We were somewhere in central Australia between Sydney and Perth.  It was very close to Christmas, and so the height of summer. I never minded being away at these holiday times. I preferred to work. The up-side of so much travelling is that it becomes your way of life. The down-side is that you have very little going on, friendship groups mainly, when you're back home. My family loved travel.  We were pretty adventurous, taking full advantage of those 1960s/70s Clarksons/Thomsons package holidays to get as far away as possible - Tunisia was a favourite.  My sister lived in Dubai for many years. My mother was always going off on her own jaunts.  I remember well our flight back from Sydney to London. The only time I managed to secure an upgrade for all of the crew. We always had to have a big sum of cash in the budget for excess baggage charges on those 36 silver boxe

This was a trip south from Japan mainland to the island of Okinawa. There's a big US military base there and we were there to film a day of training exercises.  We were due to fly home after this, and I opted to take a few days' leave and stay, on my own, to explore the island.  Unfortunately, it felt at the time, the army PR man learnt of my plan and invited me out with him for the evening.  They had been so hospitable, warm and welcoming to us, it was impossible to refuse. What excuse could I have used? The solider in the top photo, btw, was NOT, unfortunately, he, or I might have been less reluctant.  Anyway, he collected me from the hotel that evening, a Saturday night I seem to remember, and there were flowers. He did all the dating moves, like opening the car door for me whilst I cringed inside. I'll never forget the moment he pulled away from the kerb. My passenger seat wasn't fixed to the car in any way and it shot backwards. Yet more embarrassment. However the