Jack Rainier
Well-known member
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2017
- Messages
- 107
- Reaction score
- 1
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
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