Although Botswana would have seemed like paradise to my parents when they arrived, in reality it was just a dust bowl at the time. There were few paved roads in the town and even fewer amenities. Although there were a couple of play schools in town, the teachers at the play schools barely had an education above a play school level themselves which was a little scary as my parents wanted us to progress past playschool before we hit 15 years of age… not to be put off, without any experience whatsoever, mum opened up her own play School and the three of us spent the next 4 years at home!

This would typify the next few years of mum’s life; if it wasn’t there or needed doing, she would find a way to do it. Having left school at the age of 16 to go nursing, and having travelled around the world are so many years at an early age with her father who was in the British army visiting the colonies, Botswana was the perfect place for the entrepreneur that mum was already growing into. The play school soon became a place for the expatriate community to send their kids and became the premier play School in Botswana (not that hard I grant you, but it was a good start and kept the family occupied until we hit junior school).

It appeared at this time that mom was not the only person in the family that had an entrepreneurial streak running through her; the family found that out the hard way that I was a chip off the old entrepreneurial block when I decided to open up my own hairdressing salon at the play School (think Zohan without the skill). My father’s boss, a complete wally, had a son at the play School who was the same age as me; I decided to take him behind the back of the house and give him a new look. It appears that those safety scissors that you give to kids in play school aren’t quite as safe as they might first appear! When the kid’s folks came by to pick up “tufty” (the poor little bugger looked like a tennis ball that had gone through a meat grinder) a little later, the mum burst into tears and my dad’s boss had a right go at him. Although I got a good telling off in front of the kid’s parents, I knew what I had done couldn’t have been that bad as my parents started wetting themselves laughing after the boss had left! That was my last attempt at hairdressing until I started shaving my own head 30 years later!