To quote Bernard Shaw's Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, "An ordinary man, who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance, to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants... An average man am I." Sentiments that visited me in mid-life when personal loss created a void and an uncertain future beckoned. But I reckoned without the mythic Three Old Crones of Fate who had watched over me since birth, guiding me through a charmed life (I didn't realize it at the time), and weren't about to desert me now. I was given the gift to start again . . . and I did with a very special person. Now, with the inevitable final curtain looming over the horizon, a dear friend (prominent lawyer to boot) said, "write it down, tell your story, you never know, others may be interested" Then he laughed. I have a big enough ego to believe that the laugh signalled his joy at the thought of reading a finished account For the sake of my two wonderful children and their families I also needed to record what I remembered rather than have someone else write down what they thought I remembered. This is that life of Just a Lad.