David Wadsworth

A bit of news now, about David, to go with this old picture.

The picture was taken by Julian Chichester, on the school skiing trip (thanks Julian) and the news is that I've heard from David, who has been living in Hong Kong for years, working in the clothing trade.

David says his terrestrial address is liable to frequent change, so Email is the safest contact route.

Here is his brand new tale of his life and times.

"Having been shamed by the efforts of Alan B, David M, Chris B & Willy B, all "fellow builders", please find below the brief history of my life after Bedales.

I went to college in Leeds to study clothing technology & after 3 years & against all the previous history of exam results, passed!
That was in itself momentous. Getting married the same year was also, to a holiday romance girl. We have produced 2 boys, now in their early 30s and running their own businesses.

From college I went to work for the same company as my father & spent the next 8 years there, before leaving to form my own company, with a friend, he selling, me making. This was in many ways the most satisfying time work wise in my life to date but, having got it up & running, employing 100+ people, we knew that the coming recession in 1980/81 would be very hard to survive, so we shut it down, much to the horror of our accountant, but totally the right decision.

From that I went to work for a large clothing company, this time selling rather than making. A few years later moved to yet another company and finally began working for myself as an agent, until the momentous day I was offered a job to set up a quality control office in a city in southern China, for a Hong Kong based garment trading company.

Arrived here in February 1995, never having been in Asia, & well, been here ever since...although not working for the company that brought me here.

Sadly, my moving to Hong Kong did not turn out as the life plan we had envisaged, i.e. married young & the boys gone, when we would still be relatively young, then it would be our chance to do some exciting things. We were divorced in '96, my wife never having been to look at Hong Kong.

So now here I am, still working in the garment industry, travelling into China quite a lot. It is an incredibly exciting place to be involved with, the speed of change is amazing. It has to be seen to be believed.

What the future holds I really don't know...but England feels a long way away."