About the Fictional Tourist
Follow my travels
How it all began
At age seven I ran the school library during my lunch break. Don’t get excited, I’m not some child genius, this consisted of a three-tier bookshelf on wheels. It was however, the beginning of my appreciation for books and planted the seed that there was a big wide-world outside of my hometown just waiting to be explored. My first literary memory was taking home a storybook about New York. I can’t remember the author but if I close my eyes I can still picture the artwork. I knew in an instant I just had to go there but at that time, I didn’t think about how it would happen. “I just knew it would”.
I’m originally from South Yorkshire in England but ended up calling Australia home after quite a few years wandering around the globe. I did achieve that childhood dream and went to New York when I lived and worked in the New England region of America. It’s an area that I love and often return to; and looking back I did most of my growing up there, and made some life-long friends. That’s where I developed an interest in history and art and bought so many books.
Thank goodness there were no luggage restrictions in those days – I brought back two extra suitcases of books! After that there was no sitting still, and my working holiday continued to the tiny island of Sark (in the Channel Islands), through Europe to Austria, Greece and Turkey, on to India and Malaysia, and finally to the shores of Australia.
