Seventy-seven!

The German term Schnapszahl is a number made up of identical digits. This is seen as a good-luck charm and is much sought after for car license-plates. At the supermarket, if your bill happens to add up to 5,55, you might wonder if it is your lucky day and then run off to play the lottery! But the real meaning behind the schnapps and the number probably stems from alcohol, in this case obviously the schnapps. We might see double numbers, when our alcohol intake has been too much, for example when celebrating a Schnapszahl birthday. Aged 22 I was an innocent returnee to the United Kingdom after half-a-dozen formative years in the United States. 

At 33 I had turned my back on the British Isles and was exploring France, Switzerland and Germany. When I turned 44 in that Orwellian year 1984 my home was Munich and I was married. My birthday surprise was a trip to Venice where by coincidence the Carnival was in full swing. However at 55 I was single again. Aged 66 in Abu Dhabi I had already commenced this blog! And now that I am77 I’ve decided it’s time for the comprehensive look back at the first six decades of my life in my Memoir to be released in its present iteration. It’s been a work-in-progress for a good few years; the attempt to ‘know thyself’ has been a self-imposed task, and not always an easy one. But, like the life I’ve led, it hasn’t bored me. As David Bowie put it: “Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person that you always should have been.”