Recounts the writer's international experiences, often connecting them to issues and events that touch on us all. The chapters are organised in themes - early identity, West Africa as a colonial servant concerned with produce like cocoa, palm oil, rubber and groundnuts for export - travels as an international businessman servicing the sugar industry - language and communication from the shredding of the English language by its American version, the disappearance of Scots in spoken interactions to problems in cross-cultural situations. Links these to an eclectic collection of studies from the idea of luck, the body beautiful and hospitality to boozing, pidgin English and survival on the roads. The chapters are self contained within the themes which makes the book one that can easily be dipped into from time to time.