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In 1980 my life changed - I met Liz in a check-in queue at Heathrow Airport.
We were both en-route to holiday in Kenya.
We got married on February 5th 1982 in our local registry office with just 5 guests -
Liz's parents, my father, and my best man, Ernie Stene and his wife Val.
We didn't want a big, expensive wedding with people we didn't know and which would prevent
us enjoying OUR day.
The next big event was when we moved to Saudi Arabia (or to be more accurate I did).
Liz wasn't able to join me until 6 months later. I joined Saudi Business Machines (the IBM agent in Saudi) as a Systems Engineer. We had 6 good years there but
were ready to go home.
We ended up in Marlow, Bucks. - a pretty little town full of incredibly expensive property. However it became obvious that the business partnership
we'd moved to Marlow for wasn't going to work out so we became hotel owners in Scotland.
The biggest mistake I've ever made: Liz hated it;
I enjoyed the business aspects but not the complete lack of personal time;
We couldn't get out quickly enough !
Back to Saudi - Al Khobar this time. Al Khobar was a big change from Jeddah. Very much a small town, I liked it.
After 13 years in Saudi we felt it was time for some freedom
so we moved to live in Bahrain. At that time I commuted across a causeway every day to my job in Al Khobar but now I look after
all of Saudi and spend a lot of time trvelling, much of it in Riyadh. It's good to get back to Bahrain !
In Bahrain women can drive, women can work, there's bars, alcohol, cinemas, churches
- Bahrain is the civilized, tolerant side of the Middle East. After Saudi, life is very relaxed.
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