William J. Nicol

Never A Home of My Own William J. Nicol

This book attempts to bring the 'seven ages' of the author's life together, blending his experiences recorded in his seminal autobiography 'Against the Grain' and 'Another Story', a tale of a son and a daughter of two villages in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland. School days in Guiana, Glasgow, and Fife, two years in the Army, and six years studying Medicine turned the boy into a doctor. Dreaming dreams with Avril, their marriage, their family and their affinity for common spiritual and material values set them on a pilgrimage of repeated challenges. Three years in a mission hospital in apartheid South Africa, conflicting interests didn't deter the writer from returning to South Africa to develop the Orthopaedic Service for the Transkei before settling in West Yorkshire. In time another phase of life beckoned. Ordained to the ministry in the United Reformed Church, churches in Newcastle, Ashington, the Borders, Pietermaritzburg, and anyone interested have all heard the sermon on the hip joint.