A picture for every year: 1962 to 1976

This second set of pictures starts where the first left off with a picture free year in 1962. That was the year I turned 15 and started in the fith form at Hawarden Grammar School.

Number two is the second of my school photos and I’m dead centre in the second row from the back. I’m guessing that was taken in the first half of the year because the next picture is of me with Peter Evans (centre) and Rodney Macgregor (right) when we were in the first year sixth which would have been 18 months later. Photograph number four is me in the second X1 cricket team (back row, second left). David Norbury (front centre) was captain.

The next five photographs are all from my years in Cambridge. The first is the freshers’ photo at Churchill College in 1966, that’s me in the centre of the third row. The second is the 6th May boat which I coxed and won its oars. Number three is the photograph of the JCR committee on which I served in my third year and the fourth is of me and my mother after the degree ceremony in 1969. Finally, for this set, there’s me (with cigarette!) and three members of a four which rowed in the Cambridge regatta. We sadly reached but lost in the final. Mike Moles to my left has sadly died. Ed Libbey whom I’ve recently met is on the right. Ed, Mike and I shared a house in 1969/70.

From 1970 until 1974 I was working for Shell in London but none of my photographs are of my time there. The first one, extreme right middle row, is me as an usher at Gillian Cowburn’s wedding. I’m standing on the right. Then it seems it was all about Japan with trips there in 1972, enjoying a roof top beer with Hagiwara-san and Fujima-san from the Tokyo office, and 1973, on a trip down the Ise peninsula with Fujikura-san and Hirano-san (not pictured). Then in 1974 I was working for Mobil Oil and enjoyed a trip on the Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka with two charming Japanese ladies in the club car. Note the appearance of my moustache between 72 and 73.

I moved to Jakarta via New York in 1974 and enjoyed the freedoms of a well-paid expatriate life. The penultimate photograph is taken outside the excellent Tamarinde restaurant and bar. And finally the last photograph is inside the bar where Phil Judd (second left) and I (on the right) held a joint leaving party. The others in the photograph are Dodi Abnurachman (left) of PT Guinness Indonesia who sponsored the event and Paul Stock of Cathay Pacific.

And that’s it. I left Jakarta for Hong Kong and Mobil Oil for Dow Chemical and they’ll feature in the next set of 16 photographs.