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Bahrain-loving John Teasdale is set to launch a book sharing some of his most intriguing journal entries growing up in the 1960s, hoping to raise awareness and funds for children currently being deprived of a childhood.
The 74-year-old former Bahrain resident is set to launch his first book Diary of a 60s’ Teenager compiling journal entries from when he was aged 14-16, and all royalties from the sale will be donated to charities providing aid to Ukrainian children.
“I grew up in Nottingham and went to Ellis Boys’ Secondary School, where, aged 14, I had an excellent English teacher, Keith Gordon, nicknamed ‘Flash’ who gave each of us a nice black hardcover book and asked us to keep a weekly diary, which we did for two years,” the British national told GulfWeekly.
“My book is a collection of 40 of these entries and is therefore the genuine product of a 1960s teenager.”
John lived in Bahrain from 1976 to 1991 as a teacher at St Christopher’s School, leaving just before the Gulf War started.
During his time in Bahrain, he met and fell in love with Angela, one of 50 South Korean nurses who came to the kingdom in 1978 to help open the Salmaniya Medical Complex’s first major expansion. They got married in 1979 in Seoul, South Korea and had three children.
Meanwhile, for 60 years, the diary, filled with 55 entries covering school, holidays, cinema visits, sports, weather and dances, lay amongst his childhood things and John knew he had to publish it one day.
Amongst other things, the book is a lens into the life of the only child of a middle-class family who grew up in a world without mobile phones, Internet and colour TV.
“I have selected entries over a two-year period, when it was not global warming, but the big freeze of 1962-63 that caught the headlines,” he added.
He also shares an anecdote about missing the chance to see The Beatles perform in his hometown, turning away when his teacher offered tickets to his class.
The book starts with a prologue describing his teachers and the layout of the school to give context to the journal entries, which have been kept intact, except for spelling changes as corrected by Flash, which he notes at the end of each journal entry.
Providing valuable context is a background section, which includes research done to help those who did not grow up in Nottingham at the same time get a lay of the land. Also included are Flash’s comments at the time.
At the end of the book is an epilogue where John discusses the path his life took upon graduation, including his circuitous life journey to Bahrain and then back again, all of which he plans to expand into a full autobiography, which he is currently working on.
“There is actually a diary entry about a school holiday in Switzerland which gives an idea of how much I enjoyed travel and foreshadows my future foreign trips,” he added.
“In 1978, I went round the world from Bahrain to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Hawaii and Los Angeles, followed by a trip across America by Greyhound Bus and a flight to the UK and finally back to Bahrain.”
The Diary of a 60s’ Teenager will be available on January 26 in major UK bookshops and will also be published online on Amazon, Nielson and Pegasus as well as online bookstores like Foyles and Waterstones.
All royalties will be going to the aid of Ukrainian children, according to John.
