Hooray it's the weekend!

[Jack Rainier]

My friends know me as Jack as far back to when I walked out of a terrible boarding school, hopped on a train to London and phoned my uncle Peter to give me a job as a messenger boy. My dad was wheeling, dealing and womanizing in France, my mother living with an ex-army thug of a major and so uncle Pete was the man I worshipped. Of course, in the 1960's anyone could walk out of school and do things nobody would possibly be allowed to do these days, so by the time I was 12, uncle had promoted me to junior copywriter, and I lived in digs with his older son Jerry.

School taught me to be a free thinker and despise authoritarians. Bored with lessons I'd gaze out of the window dreaming of becoming a war photographer and journalist. Little did I know that a chance meeting in a Soho pub with Don McCullin perusing my monochrome photos of seedy Soho nightlife was to land me a job being a rookie reporter for The Guardian, my work starting in Northern Ireland.

Off came my Savil Row suit and polished black Grensons. My ponytail got chopped for a crewcut. I donned a biker's leather jacket and paraboots as the gear is always good in a fight, and saying farewell to uncle Pete at Service Advertising in Bowater House Knightsbridge, at the age of 17 I swapped my chief copywriter status for a lowly reporter. I worked for 7 years during 'The Troubles'. My god, did I grow up then!

Disliking the editor of The Guardian (he was a posh Oxford Grad with degrees in journalism, but possessed no nous), I was recruited by Reuters News Agency and sent to Berlin and there I was to meet Kate Adie and a bunch of other great news journalists. I've worked with Bill Simpson, Gavin Hewitt (he still works for the BBC), Jeremy Bowen, all brilliant journalists. Twenty-two years later in 1995, I adopted a Croatian war child called Katy and finished my career as a war correspondent and took her home. Having seen far too much I'd outlived my usefulness. The war in Bosnia washed me up. Time to get out while my sanity remained intact. I took early retirement, but still worked in film editing, like with Michael Bay from 2008 doing ads for Victoria's Secret. I loved my work, but at 2012 I thought it was time to retire.

I never believed in guardian angels til meeting young Katy. The evil Serbs murdered her family, but they spared her. Having watched them kill her mother and father, her cousins, brothers and sisters too, she went mute. She and I and my wife Barb communicated with sign language and I spoke her native language, so we somehow muddled on until taking her to see Robbie Williams live at Knebworth in 2003. And that was when at 18, Katy found her voice.  

Since twenty years ago, I've been fighting to keep going because the horrors of war, the sound of screaming children, gunfire, snow and ice, military dogs and searchlights caused PTSD in me. I still can't watch BBC News for being triggered. I've lost all my friends either to war or they've married and moved on. But I have a great life, a loving wife and a great bunch of teenage children. Just that when they go to college and my wife to work (she's a nurse), I tend to get lonely though Katy's next door but she's ill again.

I joined to make online friends. And maybe help people.

Got to go do the dreaded grocery shopping now, but I'll be back later and have a natter.

All the best and thanks for letting me join.

Jack

 

[constant stranger]

Yours is a rich and full story.  It would be a boon for the members of this site if you choose to engage in an ongoing dialogue.
Dunno what's in it for you around here though....seems like your frame of reference is a bit wider than what we're used to.

 

[Jack Rainier]

Thank you for the welcome and your compliments, Constant Stranger.

I'm just an ordinary guy who had the good fortune to have the career of one's dreams, except emotionally there was a high price to pay both for my daughter and I. As one goes on in life and friends leave and one gets older and more susceptible to pain, vulerability sets in. As we get older, so that happens. So let's see how I get on. From what I see, ALL seems a nice forum.

 

[TheRealCallie]

Welcome to the forum

 

[Jack Rainier]

Thanks Callie.

 

[zero]

Hi and welcome!
Seems you have a strong bond with your daughter Katy. So how is she now and how are your other kids getting along with her? Your story is impressive. Hope you`ll find friends here.

 

[Sueyguy]

Nice to meet you, i think its very nice of you to dedicate your time to people like us who could use a little bit more sunshine, and i believe we could all benefit from your presence and your rich life experience. Hope katy gets better to.

 

[kamya]

All I notice is the Lacoste shirt =P

Welcome to the forum. You seem like a good guy to have around.

I really liked the story about Katie.

 

[Jack Rainier]

Hi and welcome!
Seems you have a strong bond with your daughter Katy. So how is she now and how are your other kids getting along with her? Your story is impressive. Hope you`ll find friends here.

Thank you for the welcome. Yes, I hope to make friends here. Might even pluck up the courage and visit your chat room.   

As for my family, I'll try and answer the best I can while attempting to give them some privacy, okay?

Barb and I adopted another daughter. Susan is 18 and at catering college, loving it. She lives next door to keep an eye on Katy, for Katy suffers dissociative identity disorder, or DID.

It was last year that I discovered my oldest daughter had hidden her identity disorder very well from us, but it was triggered when her husband got violent with her. He's gone now, missing some teeth and pride because I like being respected and not bad mouthed, neither do I take kindly to my children being beaten about. While I realise that marriages can and do break down for a whole hog of reasons, what caused Katy's DID was her darkened past in Croatia and it grated on her husband.

We found out when last year, Susan told me that Katy was on another forum pretending to be someone she couldn't possibly be. Her trauma in the past caused her to suffer a personality disorder, and the forum members had become vicious to her. So Barb and I got her help, though the CBT therapy is a long and tiring business, Katy's doing well.

Katy's got a 12 year old daughter called Maggie, and she's just begun college having won a scholarship. We're so proud of her achieving college as it would have cost us a fortune. She lives with us because of finding her mum's switching personality disorder upsetting.

It's good though having our family living next door. There are the usual petty squabbles, but my children crack along really well and help around the house. Just don't go shopping with them and their friends.

Nice to meet you, i think its very nice of you to dedicate your time to people like us who could use a little bit more sunshine, and i believe we could all benefit from your presence and your rich life experience. Hope katy gets better to.

Hiya Sueyguy! I enjoy it here because our TV is lousy unless our children want to watch a movie, so I either read a book (presently I'm reading An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David), or play Solitaire on my laptop while streaming YouTube tracks to my HiFi, or out on the patio with a nice cuppa tea.

In-between assignments when having time off, I'd done some some interesting stuff. Like coppice work or gardening (plants don't scream back or fire tracer bullets at your arse), or renovating an old house. I've never been out of work and love being outdoors. Though rather mobilty-challenged, I try staying positive.

Thanks for your regards to Katy.

I'm up rather early today, couldn't sleep. Made me a mug of tea and here I am. It's good being here.

 

[MisterLonely]

Hello and welcome to the forum, I hope you get out of it what you're looking for, you certainly have lived an interesting life I would say, it be a shame to stop that now that you've retired, just needs to be interesting in a different way and I'm sure you'll find that.

 

[Jack Rainier]

Hello and welcome to the forum, I hope you get out of it what you're looking for, you certainly have lived an interesting life I would say, it be a shame to stop that now that you've retired, just needs to be interesting in a different way and I'm sure you'll find that.

Thanks for your welcome, MisterLonely. 

My priority is getting Katy well again and seeing our children grow up safe, happy and well. My wife is wonderful helping and such a comfort to us all. My other priority is getting my legs working and less pain, for last winter, living with pain was terrible. There are jobs to do, like grubbing out the garage and my man cave, mending fences and maintaining our private bit of beach. We're friendly to families who want to barbeque providing they clear up. It's always great seeing kiddies enjoying themselves splashing about in the sea and fishing for tiddlers when the tide's out.

I'm not domesticated, but can cook well. Our children help emptying/filling the dishwasher without having to be asked and keep their rooms tidy, though we give them a monthly allowance. Every little helps.

I've been single and very, very lonely. Silly to have married when too young, I lost my first wife to someone else while I was working in Northern Ireland. During the time spent on assignment in Beirut and later the Falklands War in 1982, that was when feeling lonely was at its very worst. I put everything into the job to compensate for it, but the reality was that all-too-familiar adrenaline rush because at times my job was dangerous. It wasn't til 1987 that I married again, but dated some very nice nice ladies up to that time.

Janet, my second wife died on me. In November of 1994, she was taken seriously ill and I was called back from Bosnia. Being a taxi driver she didn't exercise much and a massive embolism killed her. I was with Janet when she died, wouldn't leave her side. If witnessing bombing killing and murder during conflict wasn't enough, seeing one's beloved died a terrible death drove me to the very edge. Christmas 1994 was the worst in living memory; Janet's family treated me despicably. They blamed my absence for their daughter's long roading, but I argued that driving was Janet's love and it was her choice. She and her family never went without, for my well paid job provided income for them. Then I met Barbara in 1995 and to this day we've lived 21 happy years.

I'm family orientated. I live for my wife and our kids and if my retirement is going to be exciting, it'll be watching them grow up. They're a great bunch already and the greatest feeling of all? It's being loved and appreciated.