Reflections 2020

Jack and Jude are an extraordinary couple who have worked side by side since exchanging vows over fifty years ago. These sixteen short-stories explore the lives of two explorers deeply in love searching for adventure and knowledge, beginning with their African Honeymoon in 1969. Five months overland from England to South Africa in a derelict VW van, braving the beautiful and desolate Sahara, war-ravaged Nigeria and Congo, nursing their worn-out vehicle until it collapses into a swayback pile of junk. Having shared a tightly bound life for so many years, this couple knows how to stay together and they give excellent advice to all wanting to achieve magnificent feats. Failed Again highlights their indomitable spirit of never giving up in a cute reminisce from childhood days. Running Scared illustrates the danger in their lives when undertaking expeditions to mid-ocean sand patches that financed their lifestyle. Cannons boomed and frightened men dived for shelter in the South China Sea, a hotspot. On a black night in Madagascar, with their teenage sons on board, an error of judgement puts death within seconds, requiring rapid action in their most frightening experience. Retold with heart rendering anguish in The Dead Don’t Cry. Adding further dimensions to lives well lived is hard to believe stories from their mature years in the same vessel they home built in their youth. The Call of the Coral Sea, Sea Gypsies Once Again.Readers’ comments ~I love that it is raw, real, and the reflections are from all four of you. I love all the history of the places you have visited… some I have never heard of. I have learnt so much history from this book.I love the descriptions of the geography; they make me feel like I’m there in person. I love the passion for ‘mother earth’ that you have and the protective fear that we are losing this treasure with overpopulation and pollution. And I just love that you call Jude, my lady. That makes my heart melt.The way you combine personal anecdote with history and local politics creates vivid word portraits that stay in the mind. It adds depth to the experiences you describe and your interactions with the local populace. At Easter Island, you painted a vivid portrait of that mysterious, powerful, lost culture and then in a masterful stroke, aligned that well-known story of a lost civilization to the perils we face today. It brought the current situation into stark focus. One of my favourite paragraphs in this book. “The one truth is the wonder, majesty, and power of Earth and creation of life. Humans are unique for a reason, and it’s not to dominate but to find harmony and balance within the creation so we can become one with its secrets. Perhaps then we’ll attain the higher knowledge needed to understand the why? To reach universal nirvana, we need to tolerate each individual’s religious explanations and together worship Earth as tangible evidence of a force far more significant than our mortal souls. When we do that, we’ll understand the how and why.”