George Almond-Seizing Life

Higher than Everest The author has been around the block - Born in the blitz Almond's education ties him down. Finally he breaks free to cycle around Scotland but much prefers riding a black horse 1500 miles across Spain and France. A year at Oxford University is less rewarding than labour in Hamburg's docks and Berlin's brick yards before he joins an Irish gang building skyscrapers in London. 

Take a break, man. Do something useful! 

Caring for the big cats and elephants of Bertram Mills Circus leads Almond to a unique moment of luck and soon he's hitching a ride to Plymouth in a Rolls Royce. There he signs onto a square-rigged brigantine bound for Hawaii and learns he'll also be doubling for a film star. Three months later the ship sails into Honolulu Harbor where Almond transfers to an oil tanker supplying islands of the South Pacific. Oh such hardships! 

In Rarotonga, he jumps ship to stay with an Irish author and a family of witches before going on to Australia where drudgery on fruit farms is tougher than writing for the Melbourne Age. But life down under yields to the itch and Almond heads for Canada where he's employed as a ranch hand for the Champion chuck wagon driver of Calgary's stampede. Then winter drives him south for the fall round-up on west Texas cattle ranches. Yeehaa… 

Back in Europe, he heads for Costa Smeralda in Sardinia with a bunch of enterprising girls who know how to cook. He sets up a successful summer bistro but clients vanish in winter. Almond returns to the USA to promote Beefeater Gin and Cutty Sark, serving lashings of liquor for five weeks from Boston to Houston on the Flying Scotsman steam train. Selling British products extends to a spell at Neiman Marcus, the world famous store for extravaganzas. Fat wallets have bigger hearts in Texas, recalls Almond. Oh for the simple life again…

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