For the author as a young lad, there was nothing particularly special about growing up abroad. It was rather taken for granted providing numerous benefits: half-day schooling, almost continuous sunshine and sandy beaches. It was an idyll that was to be rudely shattered with the advent of teenage years with an education that could only be continued via a boarding school in the UK. A rude awakening it proved to be, and the author vividly portrays the brutal juxtaposition between the two contrasting lifestyles.

The author then faithfully documents life in the senior boarding house whilst studying for A-levels. A two-year period underscored by a war of attrition with school discipline and tetchy teachers! But then, in the final year of study, a disruption that put all else in the shade. Falling in love with a young lady in the academic year below changed everything.

From that time onwards, priorities were, to paraphrase W. H. Auden, ‘jumbled in one common box…’ What would come out on top? There was surely only one answer! The author takes us through that final year of study during which an increasing love of poetry and literature is more than matched by an obsession with a ‘country girl’. The story, told in conversational style, is a mixture of humour, melancholy and with periods of contemplation and reflection - and, as might be expected, is laced with the arrogance of youth!