Born Wild Read Free Page B

weren’t exactly clamouring for me to attend and there was no way I was getting into medical school. I did chemistry, zoology and physics with all the future medical students. My chemistry teacher put me in touch with the personnel director of Express Dairies, who took me on as a management trainee before I’d even left school. Most of my contemporaries walked straight into jobs too, but I didn’t have the contacts they had so this was a lucky break, even if it wasn’t Africa.
    As in Cockfosters, I devoted plenty of time to the Scouts. We had the option of Scouting or the CCF at Mill Hill – an easy choice. Play around outdoors, doing what I’d always loved, or wear reject Second World War uniform and march around in circles while being shouted at by a retired sergeant major. I must have got every single badge they ever made but I never became a Queen’s Scout. I have always had a problem with authority and becoming a Queen’s Scout required following rules.
    By the time I reached my last two terms I’d achieved what I needed to get out of school and, with the Express job in the bag, I was able to play a little. Bob, who had left a year earlier, used to come and pick me up on Saturday night in his father’s old Hillman Minx and we’d go cruising for girls. Unsuccessfully. But it was freedom.
    I had loved Mill Hill but casting off the shackles of authority was still a great feeling. I went on a motorbike trip round Britain with a school-friend. We got into all sorts of trouble but it was a short holiday rather than a gap year so very soon I started work atExpress. I travelled all over the country doing a variety of jobs as part of my training, from hotel management to a milk round in Muswell Hill, like Matt Monro who sang the Oscar-winning theme song for Born Free. 1963 was a great time to be young and in London and I had the best of both worlds. I was a management trainee in a huge and respected company at the forefront of Harold Wilson’s ‘burning white heat of technology’ and I was also knocking on doors in a little blue cap in the early mornings. I soon learnt that all the clichés you hear about milkmen and housewives are true. I was having the time of my life.
    As I stumbled from party to good time, Express were beginning to see the error of my ways. They battled away for two long years as I turned up late for work, took too much time off at the weekends to play rugby, grew my hair too long and showed a marked lack of interest in the dairy industry. Eventually they sent me on an Outward Bound course in a last attempt to get me to show some leadership qualities. It was to be an eye-opener both for Express and myself.
    On the course, we were divided into patrols named after polar explorers – ours for Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates, known for his honourable death when, aware that his ill health was jeopardizing his companions’ lives, he told them, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time,’ before walking out into a blizzard. Being in the Oates patrol was another lucky chance akin to getting into Mill Hill. I’ve been such an ass all my life, chewing at the hand that feeds me and always getting bored, but every now and then I meet some incredibly good person who sees past the pain in their hand and totally changes my life. The man in charge of Oates patrol was one such. Campbell Whalley was just the man I needed to meet at the time. A former game warden in the Serengeti, he had lived the life I had always wanted to lead since reading Tarzan – an ambition I had let slide through laziness and a willingness to go with the flow. He was just the kick up thebackside I needed. He told me fabulous stories about his life in the bush, the animals he had known, the battles with poachers, the solitary but hugely rewarding life. Blithely unaware of Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ then sweeping across Africa, I wondered what he was