Peter Lloyd was born in London in the dark days of WWII and, as a toddler, blasted into the street by a V2 bomb. We was first sent to live with his grandmother in Lancashire at age four and then to a boarding school in Kent at eight. His adventures as a boarder are pastiche Billy Bunter but based on life.

The Stories and Memoir format allows comparison between straight narrative and yarns drawn from experiences. These range from petty delinquency to early romances and life as a young account executive in public relations in London. The glamour of the swinging sixties in the capital is exchanged for the excitement of being at university in Scotland and editor of the student newspaper.

Travel is an early attraction and there follow accounts of international youth camps in Austria and France from age sixteen and then hostelling and camping in France, Spain and Italy. As a university student, there were extended visits to Scandinavia and Russia in 1968 and to South Africa during the apartheid era. In between, the exploits of a rent collector on a South London estate prove an eventful vacation job.

Finally there is a return to the world of work as an academic psychologist in Edinburgh and the meeting of his future wife.