When I was four years old, my mum took me and my brother to Jamaica to join my dad who had been transferred from London to work in Kingston Town as a foreman scaffolder on a twelve-month contract. There began my love affair with island life, sea, sand and surf. A few years later, when we came back to the UK we moved to Middlesbrough in northeast England, my dad's home town. We went from living like royalty, on a sun-drenched island, surrounded by palm trees, clear blue seas and golden beaches, to living in impoverished conditions in a cold, colourless northern town, with steelworks and two chemical plants polluting the air with noxious gasses. I made a promise to myself then that I was going to get out of that town and get back to Jamaica or some other island or country where there were happy smiling faces, blue seas, parrots, beaches and sunshine as soon as I possibly could. The day I left school for the last time, was the day the school broke up for the Easter holidays. The headmaster had decided that the few pupils who were not staying on to do their CSE or GCSE exams and who were leaving school for good on that day, should leave at lunchtime. There were only six of us and we were escorted from the school grounds by one of the teachers. When we were approaching the school gates I heard a voice from behind yelling "You lot will never amount to anything, you'll all end up as drunks, unemployed or in prison" I recognised the voice straight away, it was Mr Bagley, my science teacher, who had bullied, tormented and beaten me at every opportunity over the past four years. That just made me more determined to get away from England and start a new life in the tropics. His words have stayed with me to this day, and they have given me the strength to prove him wrong. I have had to cheat, lie and live by my wits to achieve my goals but since that day I have never looked back. I have worked as a chef on cruise ships, five-star hotels and restaurants around the world, been to the Antarctic, lived in ten different countries, own four investment properties and a share portfolio, had my own successful advertising business, own a beautiful house on the Gold Coast in Australia, own a boat in Boracay in the Philippines, wrote and had a book published on how to retire in Thailand, and I now live on the beautiful island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand.

My life's been fantastic Mr Bagley...how about yours?