My Life, It’S Been a Hell of a Ride: ‘An Autobiography’ of the Life and Times of Wj Adair

By Liam Adair

By telling this story, I hope to introduce incidents that have occurred in my life, but hopefully, in random order, to make it more enjoyable. Please, if you would bear with me, I would like you, the reader, to continue with me to the end. It could just be worthwhile continuing to the last page. For your participation, I thank you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Dec 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524519971

Liam Adair

I am descended from a long line of Irish-Men, I received my education at a private boarding school in England. I am an author writing under the pseudonym of “Liam Adair.” I currently reside in Victoria, Australia. Since retiring from my former career, I undertook the task of president and tutor of the University of the Third Age, Geelong Victoria, before I dedicated myself entirely to writing, I was in my seventies when I began writing. To enhance the stories and scenarios in my books, I have used my employment history that took me to several countries around the world. Also, my previous military service, to create my first main character ‘Paul Blair,' a fictional character based on my life experiences. I am the author of: - The Sterling Connection. The Rand Connection. The Ruble Connection, The DC Connection, New Directions, (in that order) all of which are focused on the character of Paul Blair, and his team of former Special Forces. Following those are my latest novels all set in Canada? Introducing Detective Chief Superintend Steve Benson RCMP, and his staff of dedicated detectives. They are, Blood under the Maple Leaf, The Douglas affair, Evil in Command, and The First Nations Affair, and as a change of pace, I have now published a short Autobiography of the life and times of William James Adair: - Title “My life, It’s been a Hell of a Ride.”

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Copyright © 2016 by Liam Adair.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016919969

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-1999-5

                Softcover        978-1-5245-1998-8

                eBook              978-1-5245-1997-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/29/2016

Xlibris

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Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 My Parents & Siblings

Chapter 3 Information on the Area of My Ancestral Home

Chapter 4 My school Days

Chapter 5 My Career in the Army!!

Chapter 6 My New Life in the Outside World

Chapter 7 Retirement

Chapter 8 The Ladies who have enriched My Life

Chapter 9 Musings and Ramblings

Chapter 10 Conclusion

Dedicated to my wife

Josina

Quotation

From an unknown source

"The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil

Is that All Good Men Do Nothing."

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

I have shared my time with the rest of Humanity when science has taken a giant leap forward. Not forgetting in the 1960’s when a man walked on the moon. Unfortunately, like the ‘flat earth’ society of yesteryear who believed the world was flat, a similar group of today still do not think the flights to the moon ever happened.

Therefore I give you the following statement, from the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, as follows, I have lived in the best, and the worst of times," is also true of the period in which I have lived my life. I believe this is an appropriate statement for the opening paragraph of this my story.

The following are the highlights of a life well spent. I didn’t get into too much dross because then it looks like the ramblings of an old fool.

Because of living an exciting life, my friends have tried many times to persuade me to write my biography, mostly because of telling them about some events that I have woven into stories. I have finally decided that maybe it’s time. In spite of what other people may think, some events I have experienced in my life, my friends believe others will be interested to read about them. So tongue in cheek I better put all this into a story, while my mind is still functioning. ‘Mind’ being the operative word.

I will mention this once; as I write this, I am in my seventy-eight year. How to make it interesting is the tough part, and will anybody be willing to read it, is the question? But it will be my legacy to my family and friends. The ones who read this in the future will think it is just an interesting story, but I can assure you that whatever I put into this manuscript is true, and as accurate as I can make it.

I currently reside in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Since my retirement. Due to the coming of old age, and not wanting just to sit around, I have looked for more adventures to take on in retirement. Some of these are listed below.

Before I forget, there are some incidences during my Army career which I was involved in; I cannot write about through having signed the Offical Secrets Act, in each case. I can talk about them when I have the family around me, but I cannot write about them. Although I don’t see what difference it could make now, as far as governments are concerned.

Why an autobiography? I am neither rich nor famous, but I do have a story to tell. I hope you as the reader will either enjoy a good read or if not be gentle when you condemn it to file thirteen, the rubbish bin. So here goes.

Some things in this autobiography I am adamant about, if you do not like what I have written, then that is your problem. I have endeavored to keep every word is accurate as possible at the time of printing. Suffice it to say the next time I shout rubbish you jump on the shovel.

There is every possibility that when I have completed this manuscript, (assuming I do finish it) I might uncover memories about myself that happened in the past that I chose, for whatever reason, to forget. My life like most others has been full of ups and downs and highs and lows. As the famous song says First, there’s laughter, then those tears. Thank you, Frank S.

I grew up in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world, suffice it to say in one of the world’s largest cities. The area I played in as a boy has now been taken over by the developers, and no longer resembles the area where I once lived. It would be an insult to the many good people and world leaders that came out of some of these regions, to criticize them now. Let’s just say, The Times they were a Changing.

I am referring to some city areas such as,

Lower East Side New York particularly the Irish Quarter,

South Side Chicago,

London’s East End, home of the Cockneys,

The Gorals in Glasgow, Scotland,

Not forgetting South Down Town an area in LA.

These are just a few, but in their day if you were born in any of them, you grew up tough. My lasting impression is that usually at that point; you had no problem with whatever life handed out. I am talking about the Irish Quarter, of any large city in the Western World. I have been asked many times what was it really like growing up in these areas. My reply is always that you needed to take a bodyguard and an interpreter to buy a bottle of milk.

There were a lot of domestic situations such as husbands beating wives, and still, there was no separations or divorce. The motto was if you signed on, you were in for the long haul. One thing I will say now, that as much as the local population were devout Catholics, the local Catholic church, and the clergy, were no help what so ever to the thousands of their petitioners over the years who had experienced family violence and led very miserable lives.

I have also decided to write this biography in a haphazard fashion, not so much random as the fact that I am not going to list the events of my life in chronological order. It would surely be boring. In other words to hell with telling you that commencing Monday I did whatever, followed by Tuesday, then Wednesday, and so on, that really would be boring. Now to carry on.

CHAPTER 2

My Parents & Siblings

I should at this point write about my parents. They grew up on the Falls Road district, (IRA country) of West Belfast. In spite of many setbacks in their lives, they were hard working honest people.

Father had a reputation when it came to the large dray horses of the day, or any horse because he was something of a horse whisperer. He had a lot of knowledge when it came to breeding Metropolitan Dray horses. He would be asked for instance to oversee a skittish mare when the mare was put to stud, because of his calming influence. He was also Stewart of a local Trotting Race Track.

My father was one of those rear individuals who could put his hand to any task around the house, (Electrics, Plumbing, Masonry, Building), and achieve a successful outcome. He, in fact, extended the kitchen at the back of the house another twenty feet. Put in an instant hot water cistern above the sink, made a folding table that could be folded to the wall when not in use. He fitted all the doors and windows, and did the entire job on his own during the few precious hours of rest he managed to have during a working week.

There was one particular incident involving farther and electricity. This house that I grew up in still had gas mantels on the wall for lighting, and tall gas lamps outside for street lighting. The lamplighter had the task of walking his allotted area, and with a long pole with a flame on the tip, he would light the street lamps at about dusk, and extinguish them at sunrise. Now to get on with the story.

I would have been about six years old when our house was attached to the electricity system. The power company had installed the meter box in the lounge under the front window. One particular occasion when it was all very new, Mother complained that there was something wrong with the electrics, to this day I have no idea what. When Mother instructed Father to act, he got his trusty heavy screwdriver opened the cabinet door and stuck the screwdriver in the screw joining the wires to the electric meter. There was a blue flash and father was picked up and thrown across the lounge and through the door of the kitchen.

Everything went quiet for a moment; no one said a word when father picked himself up, gave himself a good shake, walked over to the meter box, tore it off the wall and threw it through the front window. Before you could blink, we had Police, the Fire Brigade, and people from the Electricity Company. It was definitely on for one and all. The police threatened to charge father with malicious intent; they didn’t because he had only damaged his property, and no other. He did, however, have to front the Magistrate, but I never found out what happened. After this, until I left for boarding school the house settled down to some form of normalcy.

Another more serious incident involved my brother Sean and gas. When the gas mantles on the wall were taken down and the gas supply shut off, Father had one over the fire in the lounge left intact. He had the brilliant idea to get some flexible steel pipe, to which he attached a piece of steel pipe with one end beaten flat to form a nozel. Then all you had to do was turn on the gas, put a match to the end and you had a blow torch. Put this under the coal in the hearth and in a very short time you had a roaring fire going.

I don’t remember how long this had been used before Sean brought it to a stop. He must have been about seven at the time and had somehow managed to connect it together, and had a nice little fire going in the lounge. Undeterred he sat in the middle of the room and was spraying the fire around the furniture before Father stopped him. As usual, this was in the middle of the night. We were all dragged out of bed and had to stand across the