Sierra Leone prior to and post-Independence in the early 1960s, seemed a place of tranquillity to Tim May, just twenty-one years old. He and his companions worked and played hard but Tim was labelled a failure in Freetown, in work and in health and as his manager Mr Enk said, ‘I’m sending you to manage Port Loko branch, you will bloody well sink or swim.’ It was the time-honoured treatment of a failure in the old Empire.Management was a daunting prospect, especially without a knowledge of Bank accounting, but Tim faces the future with fatalistic hope. Immature and wracked by personal problems the prospect is bleak, particularly dealing with the wily, cunning mostly Lebanese customers who grubbed a living thousands of miles from their nation’s internecine wars. It is not only the customers Tim has to combat, but the climate, diseases and general ill health and his mental state, a strange fish in a foreign sea. It seemed the bugs and creatures, the customers, his fellow expatriates and most of all his real persona all combined to defeat him.Tim though is a strong fish swimming amongst predators and escapes to fight other.
Adrienne May/Nash September 2022.
Born in 1939 just outside greater London on the North Downs, my first years were traumatic. Nightly air raids, troops practicing street warfare in and around our area, the V1 ‘Doodlebugs,’ and the looming threat of the V2 rocket. Chaotic schooling due to my mother’s strange ideas followed, ending in boarding school where after ‘O’ levels, I struggled with depression and mental health. This book explores that struggle, particularly the five years I spent in Sierra Leone, the characters I met there, the near-death experiences I faced, and the adventures I had pre-Independence and in the five years after.
Novels by Adrienne Nash:
The Quartet. Trudi; ~ Trudi in Paris; ~ Trudi and Simon; ~ Trudi without Simon.
Breakdown
Long Journey into Light
Castle Murkie
The Trials of Sienna Chambers
The Cellar; ~ and sequel, ~ A Time to be Brave
Elizabeth
A Strange Life (Autobiography of the Author)
Tina G
To Love and Love Not
Coming Out
From the Ashes
Suddenly this Summer
the sequel Prejudice and Sensitivities
Holly
Lost in the Snow
Owning Lili
Loyalty
The Passing of Little Tough Guy
Deliverance
Sasha
The House of Lies and Secrets
Wide Skies by Adrienne May and Brian Watts.
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