A Bit About Me

Short Version (kindly written by a 'friend')

Jeff Brown is ordinary. I wish I could tell you about his rugged good looks, humongous intellect and bulging biceps, but that would be a big fat lie. He was born in Melton Mowbray, works in a 9 to 5 job and grows potatoes in his garden. He hasn’t even managed to write a nice novel for you, instead he has simply recalled true events. To tell you the truth, Jeff Brown has only released this ‘Ordinary Man’ book because he is raising money for charity. What sort of reason is that! Is he not even good enough to make himself some money out of writing?

Anyway, don’t read the introduction of his book; it promises a lot but who knows what mis-adventures await us in the subsequent pages.

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Longer Version (more boring but by me)

I went interrailing in 1994 and immediately fell head over heels in love with travelling. It seemed an intoxicating mix of freedom, amazing sights and meeting people from all over the world. On that trip, I kept a diary that stayed away from mundane details but covered the events that amused or fascinated me.

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In the following years, I squeezed in some brilliant trips and would keep a uniquely Jeff Brown style diary. Over the years my writing improved and I worked hard to make the diaries smoother whilst extracting details that were verging on the boring. After my world trip in 2001/2002 I seemed to have come to the end of my diaries and put them away. Then a couple of years later I got them out again and worked on them some more and put them away forever. Well forever in the two years sense.  Then put them away again. In the meantime, I headed off on other trips to places like Nepal, Morocco, Russia, Bosnia and Norway but my appetite to keep a diary and spend weeks writing it up had dissipated. I went on to meet Bharathi and we had a little bundle of joy in the shape of Jothi. As with any baby, Jothi seemed to eat time by the bucket load. I knew in all likelihood I wouldn't write another diary.

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In 2009 we found ourselves in an intensive care ward with Jothi clinging to life. We were presented with a diary by nurses and told that we should write in it to come to terms with the life-changing events that were unfolding. The irony of being told to write a diary was not lost on me and it felt like an old friend had returned to support me. It was probably then that I realised how amazing diaries really are. That final diary really did help me come to terms with events. I picked up the intensive care diary several years later and it was an emotional  read. It inspired me to knit together six travel diaries which covered different continents and then with the intensive care diary finishing the book.

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I then had to figure out how to get it published and try to get a decent picture of myself (hold on, there must be a better picture of me than this - I'm trying to look like a professional writer. Okay, don't worry we will just claim that I am in my creative phase).