Who is Ralpapajan? This is my Wizzography.

1. How does the name come about?  ~ Stupid really.  I started trying to get a Google presence for my books and for the Community program I wanted to advertise.  So I googled my name.  There were several authors with my name, one of whom wrote books that just were not me. Just google "Rob Thurman" and you will see what I mean. In fact, I was asked by several people why I wrote these books. I have no bother with letting people know my real name ~ my Pen Name shows it anyway.

Then another writer was a well respected Buddhist expert and father to Uma Thurman the actress. And there were more.  The same thing happened when I Googled my Community program's name ~ Helping Hands.  So what to do?

Well for me I took all the first initials of my family R L P P J N and added an A = and.  Thus came the name ~ my family in chronological order.  Of course there have been changes.  The wife coudln't take my eccentricity any more = I don;t blame her!  Two of my kids got married and the another engaged but in the light of the acronym it was a requirement that they marry someone whose initials fitted in.  They duly obliged.  Another J and an S.  Oops.I had just got a graddaughter and she was an S - so later on my sites are called Ralpapajans.  LOL.  Then another granddaughter - another S. Phew. That was a close one. They had all sorts of suggestions.

So that is the name.  But what about me?

Well then.

a. Age ~ I am a geriatric.  

b. Current Occupation ~ Retired from working for others.  Although it must be said that every company or organisation I have ever worked for is no longer in existence bar one ~ and that one has announced its intention to cease trading shortly!  Not a bad record over 50 plus years I was working at a Just Over Broke!  (Now I am just broke!)

c. So what do I do? ~ well, after a lifetime spent doing what I was told (well sometimes that happened though I must confess not too often) I now do what I want to do. (Well not quite but almost)  Mainly though I write books and try to raise funds for my Community Program (not Heping Hands though that one is still going strong but is run by someone else.)  Now I am trying to raise the werewithal to move permanently to a small country in Central America where I can set up an Experimental Project that I called Ko'ox Tun.  (Pronounced kush tunn) When I first Googled that all I got was a similar name for a type of watch.  Try it now.  Where did I get it?  It is Mayan for "Let's get going!"  I think you can sum up my life at the moment by saying that I get some money in and then watch it go out trying to set up an income from the Internet. One day!

d. Where am I from?  ~ Well then. I was born in a little market town called Melton Mowbray ~ Where the Pork Pies come from ~ in Leicestershire (lestersheer) on Mudd Island (England) way back during World War II.  But that is only where I was born.  My dad was a Royal Navy Engineer and he spent twenty years visiting 52 plus countries ~ mostly in the tropics.  So in 1948 he stuck a pin a globe (You know those things - they are on a spindle and nowadays most seem to be inflatable. It wasn't his so I hope the one he used was the solid kind.) Anyway, the pin landed in Ceylon and he got a job there with Johhny Walker ~ I must hasten to add NOT the whisky. Then just as he was about to go and send for the family the Commies took over.  (Apparently - anyway he was told he had to go elsewhere) So back to the globe.  This time it hit the northern part of the Transvaal in South Africa.  Oooh!  "No, I was with Jannie Joubert's South Africans at Tobruk.  I didn't like them. I tell you what - we'll go to the next country up - Southern Rhodesia. So we did and thus I became a Rhodesian.

e. What did I do there? ~ You name it I did it.  Rhodesia during the 'Fifties was, I believe, the very best place to live for any white boy - anywhere in the world.  I say white boy for, although I lived with an African tribe for some time as a 15 year old and had many indigenous people as friends I cannot, in all honesty say that the quality of life was the same for them.  In my latest book I am analysing, in novel form, the years from 1900 to 2005 from the point of view of the black people.  

f. What else did I do? I went to school until I was sixteen. I played rugby, cricket, tennis, table tennis, squash, golf and also rode horses and motor bikes. At 9 I drove tractors to do the Saturday morning shopping in town for my mother (the policemen helped me stop on the main street as I couldn't reach the brakes) worked in my Dad's garage on tractor engines and had quite afew accidents - at that time not mortor just the normal things that happen to kids - like tearing my leg open from below the knee to just below the hip. As you know everyone does the same.

g. What about work? ~ What about it?  Oh yes.  One has to work to live.  A pity.  I went into insurance, I wanted to write but couldn't get a job as a journalist.  My mate at school took the only jo on offer at that time.  Then I was called up for the army.  Fifty years ago last May 11 I joined the army.  But mainly I worked at insurance.  Then there was the AIr Force where I joined as a volunteer and the Police which I also joined whilst still in the Air Force and did call-ups for both.  The war was on and people were leaving the country in droves.  

h. The family?  ~ I managed to fit in a wife and three kids in Rhodesia, adding a fourth after we moved south.  

i. What about travel? ~ Well I have managed to visit about 28 countries.  

j.  Education? ~ What does that mean?  Formal - just the schooling to age 16 then work.  However, I started studying after I left school and have never stopped.  For some reason the University of Natal appointed me a Visiting Lecturerat their Civil Engineering Department and the Insurance Institute of Natal asked me to lecture their students.  A bit misguided of them probably.

k Hobbies? ~ I take photographs.  I do Nordic Walking.  That is about it.

Well then.  I think that is all.  It has been rather fun telling anyone who reads this what a big headed twit I am.  Not often one gets the chance,

Oh, I missed out one point amid all this waffle.  What do I want to do?

That is the subject for another day and another page. See ya.

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