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Chris in local dress, recently |
Chris has provided these details of his life since leaving
Trinity. He is also contributing an increasing number of interesting articles on travel
and life in
Pakistan, which you can access from the links on the left.
Chris writes for a number of newspapers and journals.
Chris was on the move again in January
2005. He has returned to Pakistan, but in the far north of the country,
near the border with China and Afghanistan. To read about where he is off
to and why [click here].
All of the items contributed by
Chris can be accessed from the menu on the left. The latest items are
at the bottom of the list.
If
you want to contact Chris, click on the e-mail link also at the bottom of this page.
I was a late starter at Trinity. We had previously
lived in Rochdale, and then we moved down to the Midlands and lived in
Ravensthorpe, so I did not do the "full stretch" at Trinity High
School and was only there a couple of years or so.
After leaving in 1963 I went straight to a scheme
called, would you believe, British Boys for British Farms. This was a
training programme run by the YMCA in Derbyshire, and gave a vocational
and academic training to 'boys' who were interested in a career in
farming. I was, at that time, convinced that my future lay 'on the land'.
I could not have been more wrong.
I spent a couple of years working in Holmes Chapel
after leaving BBFBF, and then was hospitalised with an allergy to wheat
dust, effectively ending my farming career. There was then a succession of
jobs, including encyclopaedia salesman, dry cleaner, caravan repairs and
sales and working in a cardboard box factory. For three years I worked for
Ford Motor Company, first in Crewe and then in Northampton, and it was
from there that I eventually found my true vocation - social work. I
joined Northampton Social Services Department in 1973 as a trainee Social
Worker, and stayed there until I eventually took early retirement in 1997.
During my time with Northants SSD I specialised in
working with the mentally ill and substance abusers, but gave up
practicing as a Social Worker in 1984 to go into management - and probably
made a far better manager than I did a Social Worker. I was able to pursue
an interest in working with minority ethnic groups, which eventually gave
me the 'intro' to the work, I now do - humanitarian and aid programme
management in the developing world.
1993 saw my first trip to Pakistan, and was a turning
point for me. I was (and still am) a keen cyclist, and had taken my bike
to ride from Rawalpindi to Kunjerab Pass on the China border, along the
famous (or infamous) Karakoram Highway. I was also researching indigenous
systems of social care service delivery as I went along, and quite by
chance met the woman who has been my wife for almost nine years. Rose is a
Pakistani, and now a naturalised UK citizen. She works here in the UK,
coincidentally for the YMCA - managing a community-based programme for
young people in the city where we now live, Preston in Lancashire.
In 1995 I was invited to work in Pakistan by the
Naunehal Development Organisation, an NGO in the remote Northern Areas of
that country. I stayed almost four years (taking early retirement along
the way) and returned to UK only so my wife could do a Masters here in
Preston at the University of Central Lancashire. I then worked in urban
regeneration and lecturing on management before again heading back to
Pakistan as the Acting Director of Learning for Life, a UK Charity that
works in Pakistan and India. Whilst there I got headhunted for the
Executive Directorship of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR)
based in Peshawar and Kabul, and stayed in post until shortly before 9/11,
when we all exited stage left, running.
For the last couple of years I have worked in UK as a
consultant, principally advising the Foreign Office on matters Afghan and
as a political analyst at the Royal Institute for International Affairs at
Chatham house in London. I also work for the Hounslow Law Centre as an
Expert Witness in cases involving the forced repatriation of Afghan asylum
seekers.
October 2003 saw me back in Pakistan again, this time
running a tiny NGO in the Cholistan desert, which post I am currently on
leave from and will be returning to at the end of January.
I still cycle, and have a lifetime passion for the building of scale model
aircraft. I have a daughter by my first marriage (too young, unwise and we
all make mistakes!) but Rose and I have no children. We live in a little
grade-II listed terrace in a conservation area right in the city centre,
very quiet and peaceful. We have a cat called Shipman [for the (to us)
perfectly sensible reason that she is a serial killer] and have been
fostering a deaf Pakistani child, Amber. Amber is back in Pakistan at the
moment but will be returning to UK in March.
