Tarka King

My early life and largely formative years were spent growing up by the seashore on the west coast of Ireland. The 1950s' local village life revolved round attending Mass, the national school, following county games on the radio, fox-hunting and sailing a small boat around the inner reaches of Galway Bay. The dream ended at twelve when I was taken to England to be expertly crammed so the yawning gaps in education could be filled sufficiently for Publc School acceptance.

Happy years were stumbled through at Milton Abbey where a desire to become a marine biologist was born. Attempts for universitiy acceptance failed and returned to Ireland to take up a career schooling young horses with boat-building as a hobby. Bringing the wrong girl back to a parental dinner party led to hastily being put on a plane to America and my entire life path to take it's most dramatic turn.

Three exciting months in America found me in San Franciso with Australia beckoning. A series of further adventures were experienced while travelling up the Malay peninsula, now accompanied by a swedish 'wife' documented in my British passport--all made possible by an unexpected financial windfall. A mad expedition into Cambodia paid off in that during it I discovered how to by-pass Burma and reach India in time to watch the sun illuminate Everest from Darjeeling on January 1st 1970.

My mother's arrival in Delhi heralded a new life chapter. Within weeks of returning to the UK a six-year sojourn in the British Army began and was followed by another insane move, this trime to return to Ireland but not to Galway. My new role was to take up farming an area of my mother's old family home, located right on the Ulster border. Five tricky years during the worst of the 'Troubles' terminated with a request from the Gardai to leave.

By now it was 1982, I was properly married with a son and so bought a house in the south of England with the proceeds of a strategic cross-border land sale. Settling in Dorset a ceramics business was pulled togetherbut the Ulster property was retained.

Recruited in 1990 to assist a Japanese ministerial fact-finder on an expedition to Kazakhstan led to high level trips to Japan itself. In 1994 the derelict 55-mile bed of the cross-border Ulster canal was identified at local county council level as a constructive response to the IRA ceasefire of that year. The involvement begun then continues.