Acknowledgements

My life-long gratitude goes to my parents, Patricia and Michael O'Dowd, sadly now both deceased. They gave me the greatest gift one can offer to a child, particularly to a girl. They never said 'no' or 'please don't' or 'it's too dangerous'. After taking a minute to get their heads around my latest mad scheme, all they ever said was 'how can we help?'

My thanks go to Ian Woodall, who was so often the instigator of the mad schemes that dominated this period of my life.

The following people kindly helped with preparing this electronic edition: Clare Allcard, Tanja Bosch, Ken & Rachel Bryan, Barbara Curson, Patricia Grey, Jim Hall, Colin Jones, Emily Pitts, Elly Schierbeek. My thanks to you all.

And finally many thanks to Christopher Lascelles of Crux Publishing, who brought this ebook to life.