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Findochty loon shares memories of globetrotting career


By Alan Beresford

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A FORMER Findochty man has made sure the memories of his globetrotting career will not be lost to his children – by setting them down in a special book.

Finechty loon John Sinclair with a copy of his globetrotting memoirs. Picture: Daniel Forsyth
Finechty loon John Sinclair with a copy of his globetrotting memoirs. Picture: Daniel Forsyth

Pensioner John Sinclair – more commonly know as Ian to his fellow Justers – now lives in Elgin but spent most of his working life, beginning in the early 1970s, abroad in places that were exotic to most people at that time.

The book, which spans 250 pages, 24 chapters and 114 photos, covers an engineering career which took John to Peru, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong (twice), Malaysia, Spain and Kuwait.

He said: “The kids had been at me to set down my memories of all the places I’d worked so they’d have a memento of it.

“We had them with us until they were 14 or so then they went to boarding school in the UK, so they missed the likes of Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, although when they were older they did come out to work in Hong Kong in their own right.

“It took me about 10 weeks to set it all down on paper although I started later than I’d intended due to problems with cataracts.

"I’d no diaries to work from but I did have lots of photos to help remind me of things.

“The book was never meant for publication, rather something special for my kids.”

After graduating from Aberdeen University, he was to end up working in London and the West Country.

A job working on the Bristol waterworks plant was to eventually see a lifetime abroad in the pipeline.

The boss of the plant was so impressed by John’s work he asked him to stay on and help make it a showpiece facility, meaning a much longer stay than initially anticipated.

John continued: “By the time I’d finished in Bristol and was ready to move back to London, things had changed a lot for us.

“Now we had two kids and while before we had two incomes we only had one, all of which meant we had two choices – either move out of London to somewhere cheaper or go abroad.

“Three months later I was in Peru.”

A long two-year stint with no home leave was ahead of John, who had to learn Spanish, the lingua franca among the contract team which was run by a Yugoslav who could not speak English.

The language was to come in useful years later, after a brief period of retirement and three months in Kuwait, when he helped an expat sell, of all things, cave houses in Spain.

His favourite place, though, was to be Malaysia where he adored both the people and the food, not to mention the stunning and varied scenery the country has to offer.

He was often called to go and troubleshoot at projects in various locations near and far at short notice and he soon got into the habit of keeping a suitcase packed in his office ready to grab when the call came to move.

Many of the projects involved flying by the seat of his pants, with solutions to urgent engineering problems literally “drawn on the back of a fag packet”.

Retirement, though, was to beckon at long last for the well-travelled Findochty engineer.

John said: “The problem with working continuously overseas is you become pretty much unemployable in the UK.”

The Sinclairs initially set up home in Oxfordshire before returning to the north-east after a gap of 37 years.

After almost four decades away from his native north-east, a great deal had changed, John said, some things for the better and others not so positively, but it was neverthless good to be back.


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