Continuing the discussion from Writing to stave off dementia:
I have just finished writing my autobiography, I did it as an exercise to find out how good my memory is and it surprised me how much I remembered.
I began with a prologue which covers my childhood and teenage years, then I moved onto my military service, which covers all of the posting and operations that I was involved in, including my years in the SAS regiment. I then went on to include why I was given a medical discharge and how difficult I found settling in civilian life was.
It tells how the meningitis which I became sick with while on a mission in Kenya was given as the cause for me suffenly having epileptic seizure.after I returned to England. Following my medical discharge from the army, I found it very difficult to get work because of the stigma that was attached to epilepsy at that time.
Not being able to get employed by anybody, I started my own construction company, in one year I had twenty men working for me, and had a turn over of three quarters of a million pound. The company was thriving, but my marriage was suffering. My wife was going out most evenings and told me she going to play darts and badminton for the local; ladies team.
However, she was actually having affairs with other rmen, and it wasn’t until she gave me gonnorea that I went to the doctor and aske dhow I could have gotten it when I only had one sexual partner, my wife of twenty years. Naturally I discovered what she was doing and divorced her.
Following the divorce she went to everybody we knew including my father and one of my aunts and told them that I beat her and was so cruel that she had no choice but to divorce me, which was all lies.Even after we were divorced and I had remortgaged the house to pay her half of the equity she was owed from the divorce, she was still phoning me and asking to borrow money, but I refused to help her.
Eventually the housing market collapsed alongwith the construction industry and I had to declare myself bankcrupt. When I left the bankcruptcy court all I owned were the clothes on my back and a passport. I had lost my house, car, furniture, and bank account, but what hurt the most was that I had lost my pride.
I lived on the streets for six months, and one day one of the men I ha dserved with in the SAS saw me on the street. He couldn’t believe how far down the ladder of life I had come. He took me for a coffee and asked what had happened after I had been discharged from the Regiment. I told him what had taken place, suddenly he told me to wait where we were and he would be back within thirty minutes. True to his word he came back and took me back to his house, he told me to go and take a shower and that there were some clothes on the bed that would fit me. While I had been waiting at the place he had been out buying new clothes for me. I told him I was in his debt and didn’t know when I could pay him back.
He replied, I had paid him ten times over when we were in the regiment together and I owed him nothing. I was forty years old then, now I’m seventy years old and although my health is gradually deteroriating, I have a wonderful Thai wife who is loyal, loving, and faithful, we live in our own house which is bought and paid for, and we have peace of mind plus each other.
If you want to know more about my life story, buy a copy of my book its tilr is SNIPER and it will be in the book shops and on book stands in January 2019.