Of all of my personal passions in life my rescue dog Mowgli is right up there. I found him as a puppy when we lived in India and he was in a pretty bad way having been ran over by a motorbike; he also had a belly full of dirt because that’s all there was for him to eat but worse still he had fleas the size of grasshoppers literally eating him alive. In India we’d had him two years when the time came for us to return to UK so we flew him back – straight into six months of quarantine kennels – where every Saturday I would sit in his pen with him until he finally got released.
(Mowgli, very much recovered from his dreadful ordeals and appalling injuries)

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Though not to dwell on Mowgli’s story (which believe it or not I have almost finished writing but haven’t published online yet 🙂 ) the reason I mention it is because (given his past) I won’t leave him with anyone unless I’m absolutely sure he’s happy and loved to bits. His story is called ‘Beautiful Soul’ which I’ll be finishing off and publishing after these memoirs are completed. Of the very few people in the category of ‘People I would leave Mowgli with’ is an old friend from India now living in the UK called Francis (Fran) who had agreed to come down from London to Wales to look after him; without Fran our trip to Gibraltar in 2016 would just not have happened.

(Fran with Mowgli at Strumble Head lighthouse)

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Fran arrived a few days before our flight and Mowgli was clearly thrilled; they hadn’t seen one another for quite some time and so it was a lovely vision to witness. Mowgli was so excited he didn’t know what to do with himself. During the days before we left I took them both around all of Mowgli’s favourite walks and Fran also got to know all of his little routines, particularly his love of loafing around on his cushion in the garden, which gave me the peace of mind I needed to be able to jet off and leave him.

(Fran and Mowgli on my back garden)

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Finally, on 13 May 2016 (knowing Mowgli was safe and happy) we set off from South Wales and drove up to Birmingham airport where we met Sheila and Joe who had driven down from Nottingham. After checking in and dumping the bags we went off for a meal and a chill out as we waited to board our Monarch flight. It was exactly forty years to the day that Carol had made the very same journey with Tracey and Samantha and at the forefront of my mind was the hope that she loved Gibraltar today as she had all those years ago.

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As I looked out at the Monarch aircraft that was to take us on our short flight south to Gibraltar a million thoughts went through my mind. Memories, feelings, emotions, pains, joys, angers, frustrations – there was so much mental traffic passing through I couldn’t contemplate any of it. So many thoughts that until writing this post today I’d never shared with anyone but myself. This wasn’t just a short flight to me; it was a journey forty years into the past so steeped in emotion that even I didn’t know how I was going to feel or react when we actually landed. Was it really the utopia I had always believed it to be or had I been kidding myself all these years? Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by a voice over the tannoy: “Attention passengers on flight ZB446 to Gibraltar please make your way………”

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