Jeremy Taylor
BootsnAll Author
My name is Jeremy Taylor. I'm now 26 years old. Almost everyone I know now calls me Jez. Even my parents succumbed years ago. Having completed my first year of university and deciding that it was probably a good idea if I didn't go back, I needed a job. I knew what sort of job I wanted and that's why I didn't want to go back to university.
After about six months of working I had managed to save up enough money to do something worthwhile. I was young and I wanted to see the world.
When I was little I always wanted to go to the USA. Then my parents started taking me there on holidays. So that idea was swiftly banished. It's not that I didn't like America it was just that by the time I was old enough to travel on my own I had already seen a major chunk of the country. So my thoughts turned to Europe, that's just on my doorstep, and I wouldn't need to spend loads on an airfare. A quick visit to a student travel shop confirmed that I had enough money to spend a month visiting the major cities of Western Europe. It wasn't until I got off the plane at Charles De Gaulle airport that I wished I had spent more time learning French when I was at school. Still, at least I knew how to count to ten. It was the other six languages that I didn't have a clue about.
Once safely back in England, and having surprised my old work colleagues by going back to them, I set about looking for my next challenge: Australia. I soon discovered that I could get a year work visa for Australia. So whilst my old friends from university were slogging away through exams and course work I kept them up to date with a steady stream of letters and postcards about my latest antics in that country. Needless I say I had whole lifetimes worth of experiences. I always think that I grew up more in that year than any other. After Australia it was on to New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Raratonga, Fiji, then home again.
After this journey there was no way I could go back to living in a sleepy little village. So I upped sticks and moved to London. There I stayed for five years. At the back of my mind I always promised myself that I would go travelling again, but as so often happens, work, girlfriends, friends and numerous other excuses always get in the way. However, after a dreadful couple of months at work, a shared house that was rapidly turning into a hellhole and nothing to do at the weekends except go down the pub with my friends, I finally snapped. That was it, I had to go travelling again. There was more to life than the daily grind of the 9-to-5 and the absolute horror that is the London underground.
Feel free to email Jez at jez_home@hotmail.com. Also look to the left for links to all of Jez's BootsnAll articles.
