In Adventures of a Looney Scot, you share your childhood experiences in Glasgow and trace your life through class, landscape, and national identity through a comedic lens. What made you decide to tell your life story?

I am no ‘spring chicken’, hence I need to speak up now for my children’s sake, or forever hold my tongue. Note that Adventures of a Looney Scot follows the first part of our hero’s life (see video link) as described in Book 1 of the Quantum Leap Forward trilogy that sets the scene for Ewan MacLeod’s leap from Scotland to Hong Kong. (see Facebook). This is soon to be followed by Book 2 Epicentre: Hong Kong (Edition 2) when that city state experiences the shock of The Big One; then finally Book 3 The Making of Punta – our resort in the Philippines that presents the development of The Most Sustainable and Liveable Resort in the Philippines (see Punta Riviera Resort and also Facebook).

How did you decide what to include from such a wide-ranging life without losing that sense of spontaneity?

As described above, each stage is presented as a book in the trilogy. My life has, in fact, been discontinuous and very much shaped by movements from growing up in Scotland, then moving to Hong Kong, life and death in Hong Kong; then moving to the Philippines; each being very much moulded by the three women in my life who have kept us in shape, given us strong direction, and helped us keep our own and our families’ heads above water. When all else fails – exercise your sirtuin genes and – keep breathing! Ach well, that’s life!

Your family life is depicted with both chaos and loyalty. How do you see those dynamics now, looking back?

Keeping our heads above water includes that from tsunamis and flooding, for example, from two super typhoons in the latter part of 2025 and a 4-6m high tidal surge wave that smacked into our resort Punta Riviera Resort at Bolinao, Pangasinan. The stories throughout this trilogy are partly about picking ourselves up after each disaster and learning from them. Filipinos have specific words for this recovery, namely Kapwas or Bayanihan, where everyone gets up after a disaster, helps everyone else near them to do the same by seeing themselves in others, then all move forward in the same direction. In the West, we follow the philosophy of ‘Survival of the Fittest,’ which is a very weak alternative and not how civilizations have survived natural disasters over centuries. When Matt Gandi was asked by a reporter after visiting Churchill’s cabinet in London: ‘So what do you think about British Civilization?’ he is reported to have replied: ‘Oh, that would be nice.’

If readers take one thing from your story, what do you hope it is?

Readers may appreciate that in Scotland, our Ancient Ancestors from a previous civilization left us precious ancient cultural secrets that helped us keep the Roman Empire out by forcing them to build Hadrian’s Wall, the English wall-bangers at bay for many years, and this helped us maintain our unique national identity. This led to our unusual DNA and our use of intuition, invention, and creativity during and after the Age of Enlightenment and Industrialization. However, whilst these are important issues, my pride in being a Scot and maintaining a healthy sense of humour are the key ingredients in this soup.

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