As a surrealist painter my major influence was Salvador Dali, with whom I made an acquaintance, purposely living near him in Cadaques, Spain. But from an early age I was also awed by books, and used to make up facsimile copies with my own stories inside from the age of eight onwards. When years later I set off hitchhiking halfway round the world, I couldn't carry paints and canvases, so writing my travel journal took precedence. And whenever I paused for a while, stopping to worm my way into jobs at the last precarious minute when I was down to empty pockets, ideas for my children's fantasy kept burgeoning up in my consciousness.    Thus it was, having suffered scribbler's cramp, I ended up lugging a portable typewriter and wads of manuscript around with me in my already overweight rucksack, as i trekked down the whole length of Africa and hitchhiked overland to India, where I spent three years as a wandering monk studying every kind of spiritual practice I could find.     While in India, other travellers were constantly asking me where they could go to learn this or that, which prompted me to collect material and write "Seeking the Master--a Guide to the Ashrams of India and Nepal," offering details of the 360 Indian hermitages I had visited on my travels, which the media called the 'Backpacker's Good Guru Guide' for the Eighties.    Eventually as a columnist for Yoga Today magazine, as a kind of spiritual 'agony aunt' I enlarged my responses to seeker's questions into a book called "Sharing the Quest--Secrets of Self-Understanding."   Doubtless Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Tove Jansson and her Moomintroll books, have been the inspirations colouring my imagination for the writing of my children's fantasy, "Ifflepinn island" which has been likened to Moomintroll meets the Hobbit,somewherer beyond the far side of Narnia. But it is way different from either. It is a true crossover book appealing to the very young up to the very old (it's oldest fan is 89!)     

I think surviving seventy-odd years in this insane world is achievement enough.