In Complete Circles

A comic and at times irreverent memoir of school life and adolescence in a Northern Irish town during the 1980s and early 1990s with accompanying rants on the absurdities of modern life, nostalgic reminiscences on the news events and popular culture of the era and the subsequent fulfillment of youthful ambitions through travelling, sometimes verging on the surreal. This book is part memoir, part travelogue. The chapters alternate between episodes from the author's school days (written in the past tense) and subsequent travel writings (incorporating the Balkans, Australia, New Zealand, Romania, Spain and Morocco) from several years later (written in the present tense) - but always with a connecting theme linking the two eras. Examples include a schoolboy fascination with horror films linking a visit to Transylvania, daily reports of the Balkan war during the author's schooldays in the early '90s linking a tour of the region 15 years later -and a childhood addiction to tangerines and dreams of trekking through the Sahara on camelback leading to a trip to Morocco.