In With Both Feet: A Passport Full of Stories by John Reynolds

John Reynold is a Kiwi who is living life to the full. Over the course of his life, he has travelled extensively, taught around the world, studied for a BA, MA, and PhD, and written musicals and novels. Now retired, he lives with his wife near their five grandchildren. He has now released a memoir, but rather than a blow-by-blow account of every aspect of his life, he gives the reader short vignettes that serve as a road map to his personal life and work.

He was a 22-year-old with a teaching diploma when he first ventured overseas in 1964, teaching at an English school and supplementing his income by playing piano in bars. He still regrets not taking the chance to see the Rolling Stones in concert, thinking they wouldn’t amount to much, but enjoyed Spike Milligan adlibbing when he spotted someone with a box of chocolates in the audience.

John taught in England, Saskatchewan in Canada, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Australia, and he travelled widely through Eastern Europe during the Cold War, South Africa under apartheid and throughout North America, with many stories – both hair-raising and entertaining. He has escaped arrest in the then communist East Berlin, been threatened with a rifle on the Zambezi River and fled from an angry elephant in Zimbabwe.

His travels inspired screenplays, musicals, films and novels, and reading this book shows his genuine interest in people and his surroundings.

John knows how to write! In With Both Feet is hugely entertaining, warm and witty, and offers genuine reflection and much humour.  

Karen McMillan

Starblaze