This is an exercise in nostalgia, selecting those occasions when rather surprising happened while I happened to be passing through, quite often, unusual places. However it starts out in the Wales of the 1940s and 1950s where some of the focus is on the very terminal sense of passing in the human context. Then it develops into more far-flung locations across the Globe. Nostalgia adds to this the sense of difference, when travel was by ship and there was a definite sense of mystery about it all - an adventure in fact. Now, travel has become mundane in many ways, especially the getting there. The stories are sometimes bizarre, but the tales pause to let us meet intriguing characters to whom these places were home.
