From Cathay... with Love

1980 and I was newly wed to the most wonderful woman (she still is).

I'd been poached from worthy-but-penurious book publishing and whisked out to Hong Kong, there to promote my home island as part of the finest angelic tourism touters ever assembled on the head of a chopstick, I give you the Hong Kong Tourist Association.

Accommodation was paid, car was paid, it was hard to find entertainment that wasn't elegible for expenses.

Everyone was young and dynamic. *I* was young and dynamic, and wed to a woman everyone loved on sight.

*And*, with Cantonese learnt from birth at my amah's knee, I was totally, irrefutably, odiously bashably cool.

And all through those days, a background melody to our happiness, ran Barry White's Love Theme, the corporate jingle of our 'national' airline and partner company, Cathay Pacific.

I still can't hear it without my chest contracting.