Farm Boy

Monty Bryden

Description

Monty Bryden's story spans almost a century and takes him from his childhood idyll within the farming community of Argyll, in Scotland, through the precarious world of commodities trading, import and export. At times, his life story reads like an epic action movie escaping hired killers in the dark underbelly of Central Africa, facing years in jail for international fraud and battling two separate life-threatening cancers.The book details his life from the beginning, from meeting his great love to farm management, from leading a family life to adventures abroad in Venezuela to Europe anddeepest Africa where he traded in commodities and beyond. As a young man, he came face-to-face with death: on the farm, trapped underwater, behind the wheel of arunaway oil tanker and during a treacherous flood in Italy when he spent a long and anxious night perched high up in the swaying branches of a none-too-secure tree, facingthe fear that he lost his wife and young children as they were swept away by strong and violent currents. Yet his closest dice with death came at the hands of a paid killer inAfrica, having become involved in a major international fraud which hoodwinked several global banking giants and brought some world-leading commodities brokers to theirknees in a textbook anatomy of a major scam of mammoth proportions, aided by the incompetence and secrecy of the world banking community.Having also won the battle of two life-threatening cancers in his later years, Monty - now in his 90s - is about to embark on his next big adventure. His story is both aneducation and inspiration.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• África
• Escocia
• Memoir
• Africa
• Scotland
• Venezuela

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 16 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789019179
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

The
Farm Boy
Monty Bryden
Copyright © 2019 Monty Bryden

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781789019179

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

This book is dedicated
t o special people who have shaped my life.

Mary Hyndman Reid. My beautiful mother.
Patricia Mullaney Shannon.
Amy MacPherson. Mother of our seven children.
Nuala Naughton.
Ahmed Alani. My surgeon, friend and life saver.
My family – Robert, Dorothy, Molly, Alexandra, Aidan, Juliet, and Andrew for their love and friendship.
Contents
Introduction

The Beginning
The Day My Life Changed
The Homestead
Mollie Hyndman Reid
Back from the War
Art and Craft in the Family
Growing Up on the Farm
My Years of Self-Discovery
Discovering Life
Have a Break
The Start of Growing Up
Patricia Mullaney Shannon
Go! And Never Enter This House Again
Joy and Despair
Paddy and Dumbleyung
Learning the Hard Way
The Start of a New Life
St Mary’s College – Blairs
A Strange New Secret
Cranshaws –The Borders
Rashfield – Going Back
An Offer You Can’t Refuse
Brydens on the Move
The North East
William Grant & Sons
At Last
Ardbeg House
The Whole Kit and Caboodle
Reflections and Reminiscing
Tomorrow May Never Come
Grant’s
Personal Things
Our American Cousins
Linda Wylie and Attraction
Moving On – New Ventures
Lamont Country Lodges
Gordonstoun
The Whisky Industry
The Final Straw
Fiona – A Lovely Friend
A Special Interlude
The Eighties and Annie
A Real Person
Nuala and No. 3 Woodlands Terrace
The Years of Enterprise and Enlightenment
All That Glitters is Not Gold
Mignon & Pierrel, Epernay
Commodity Trading
A New Venture
Facing the Unknown
East Africa – Again
A New Experience
Karibuni, Tanzania
My Story Continues
The Final Push
Seeds, Grains and Friends
The Coriander King
The Bahamas
No. 3 Woodlands Terrace
Rivendell and a Surprise
Adelaide for a Day
Winding Down
Not Sure If I am Lucky, or Unlucky
Time to Close the Book
Introduction
Many moons ago, when I was in my early eighties, I decided that work had served its purpose to keep me mentally, and physically, alive and give me a roof over my head. This prompted me to look for an alternative source of ‘reason for living’. Among others, a desire to go back to school popped up, and within a few months, I was enrolled at Strathclyde University evening writing classes, learning to share my imagination with other similarly inclined students. I had a very good teacher, and was amazed at the enjoyment and satisfaction I got from creating stories.
This was the start of a most enjoyable insight into old memories, the recovery of happenings large and small that covers nearly a century. Lodged away deep in the memory bank, it has taken some time to recover all these lost emotions. Every time I revise, I relive my life. I found this quite incredible and would say it has been a revelation going back over my life, quite emotional and exhausting, and in some ways, a love story. I found this very exciting. This prompted me to try and put a ‘life’s story’ down on paper, and share it with you and my family. My children will get to know, and maybe understand, how my life, and our life, evolved and developed. This should provide a lasting memory of all of us, as a family.
The Farm Boy , is a creative nonfiction story. The story modestly explores a wide range of emotions and challenges that are spread across many frontiers: the natural world; human endeavour, love and despair; adventure and treachery; travel; entrepreneurship and much more.

I wish to thank Safari Partners and Joseph of Trekili Ltd in Arusha for the image of Mt.Kilimanjaro featured on the back cover. Thank you.
1
Clinging precariously high in the branches of a large Italian stone pine tree, there is a feeling of numbness and dread. It is pitch dark; the rain is coming down in sheets; thunder and lightning split the sky, and through intermittent flashes of lightning, water and debris rush by underneath. There is a total numbness, a feeling of shock. The enormity and horror of it all are unspeakable. I am contemplating my whole life that is floating back over fifty-two years.
The Beginning
It was a Monday, the first day of June 1925, when Alfred Lockhart Mundell Bryden decided to slip out of a nice warm, cosy womb into the start of a new life, a new world, and what a new world. The Roaring Twenties; a time of great joy, of dance crazy, of flappers and the Charleston; the Paris 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs that marked the explosion of Art Deco. The Jazz Age. ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, ‘St Louis Blues’, and Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ were all the rage. That was the most spectacular event in his life. My mother gently reached for this unknown quantity.
I was born in one of the farm cottages owing to my grandparents being in the farmhouse, and this remained so, until my grandfather Thomas came home from the hill one day, sat down, fell asleep and never wakened up. My grandmother Rachel Jane then moved into Dunoon, and my parents took over the farm. It would have been interesting to have asked my mum, later in life, what she was thinking about at my birth. She already had Maureen (out of wedlock, but the same father), and Alaister, two years later. Now, here she was another two years further on giving birth once more. She had conceived nine months previously, which was October. Was it passion and filled with love, or simply a mistake? I have so much confidence and optimism that it had to be a union of hearts, and I think she was filled with love and awe when this curly head slipped into the world.
I have a studio photograph of myself in a pram, and on my mother’s knee, also one that shows me sitting on a cushion between my sister and brother, Maureen and Alistair. I must be about two or three years of age. There is an inscription on the back of this photograph that says, ‘My babies! Maureen, Boy and Monty’. This is strange! Because Alistair is now ‘Boy’, and I am ‘Monty’, and she has signed herself Mollie H Reid. Where we got these names from I have no idea. The only known source of speculation is my family relationship with Lamont or La Mont.This was my grandmother’s name, but there was no love lost between Rachel Jane Lamont and my mum, and so it is very unlikely.
What I do remember is that I was very happy and popular and loved. I would come running across the side field from the school at lunchtime, and straight into the farmhouse shouting for my mother, and if she was upstairs, I would be up in leaps and bounds until we were in each other’s arms. Loving one another was so natural and acceptable, that I think I presumed the same happened in all families. At primary school, I was favoured by the headmistress who was a good friend of my mother. She was a lovely wee lady with a shock of white hair, and she always said that she would wait until the last of the Brydens were through before she retired. In this small school of maybe twelve pupils, I was at the top of the pecking order. Looking back, I am surprised that I didn’t take advantage of this, but in the countryside, in my day, everyone at our school was equal.
I was a good-looking boy, and my father was the farmer of Rashfield Farm that covered all the land in the valley between Benmore and the Holy Loch, on both sides of the River Echaig, so I suppose I had an advantage – especially with the girls. I would probably have denied it furiously, but maybe I was a little bit precocious, arrogant and overconfident. In a child, these can be attractive features, or a total turn-off.
Maybe there is a natural, naturist element in the countryside, but there was no feeling of wrong or guilt when three of the girls and three of the boys, myself included, decided to go up the back of the school into the woods to investigate our sexuality. This had been brewing for some time. The school was split between boys and girls, and at the age of nine, the girls had a heat on them that they wanted to share. It was all very innocent and natural, and we sort of separated into pairs with Peggy and I left on our own. Sitting down with Peggy I said, ‘What do we do now?’ and she giggled and laughed, and said, ‘You go first.’ Determined not to be outdone, I took my pants down, and soon Peggy pulled her dress up and slipped her knickers down, and we fumbled and touched each other and used words like fuck and red letter, without knowing what we were talking about. At one point, I had the three girls all with me, and we were kissing and touching; it was wonderful and liberating, and very stirring.
This encouraged us to set up a Saturday away from the school, this time with only t