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PERSONAL

Now we are 60

I wrote the below five years ago. That was then. To bring things up to date, as 2008 dawns:

• My mother died in April 2005, aged 91, from an undiagnosed cancer after a mercifully brief illness. I went on living between Yorkshire and her house in Hampshire, which had become my second home. We finally put it on the market in the autumn, and (d.v.) it is sold.
• Tom – 28 already! – continues to thrive. From event management he moved, as he wished, into consulting: first with Accenture, and for the past year Bain. He lives in Clapham.
• Above all, a new love I could never have dreamed of has brought me fresh life. Kate is a young Victorianist at Exeter, where I now live (still keeping the house in Yorks). I'm even running again! She makes all things new. Hard to shut my eyes and think of Kim Jong-il…

Aidan Foster-Carter: 55, looking back

I was born in 1947, the first child of Aylmer and Ethna (nee McDermott) Foster-Carter: Irish nurse marries English doctor. (I've always felt more Irish than English; being each has helped me see both sides of things.) My sister Clare followed in 1950. It was in every sense a stable home. Daddy ran the country branch of Brompton Hospital until he retired in 1972; he had all too short a retirement before a lifelong heart condition took him in 1979, aged 67. Mum, just turned 89, still lives in Vernham Dean, Hants where they retired to; she begins to slow down.

So I grew up on 90 NHS acres of rural Surrey: long ago sold off and built on, our home pulled down. My first school, Frimley Place (1952-55), was down the road: I walked. At 7 I went as a boarder to Bigshotte (1955-60), a Berkshire prep school. I flourished, finding my vocation as a swot. The school said why not try for Eton; I did, and in 1960 won the no 2 scholarship.

At Eton (1960-65) it was the glittering prizes: captain of the school, president of Pop (a higher honour), and so on. After Classics A-levels, I stayed on and did Economics and French. Also I edited magazines, played soldiers, became a socialist, flirted with Quakerism, sang in choirs, played in a rock band, and starred in a 1965 BBC film about Eton. I loved every minute of it.

Then another education began. 1966 found me in Africa: first in Rhodesia, just after UDI, for Amnesty, helping families of political prisoners. Expelled after a few weeks, I taught - maths, health science, singing, even Latin! - in a new high school in Gaborone in what was not yet Botswana, before going up to Balliol in October. Having got the Africa bug, in summer 1967 I took a boat from Marseilles to Senegal and travelled overland to the Congo, via Timbuktu.

At Oxford (1966-69), despite a classical scholarship, I switched to PPE (philosophy, politics and economics; also sociology). The spirit of '68 took hold: I marched for CND, Vietnam etc. Too much politics, not enough work. After lengthy vivas - Iris Murdoch on my side, David Butler (of swingometer fame) against, I missed a First. Quite right too: I'd read far too little.

Two days later I married Olivia: Antigua-born, at school when we met in '67, and now at Hull where I joined her as a sociology postgrad. Our 3-bedroomed end terrace cost £425; we ran a minivan, and sang in workingmen's clubs on the side. My grant ended after 2 years, and I was lucky to get hired as a lecturer at Hull, teaching research methods (!). Never finished my PhD.

Then Africa called again. I spent 1972-74 at Dar es Salaam university in Tanzania, teaching methods and development theory, my main specialism. William, our elder son, was born in Dar in 1972. We carried on singing, with residencies in two beach hotels. A wonderful time.

After summer in the Caribbean visiting Olivia's family, it was back to the UK and Yorkshire. We both got university jobs at Leeds: I in sociology, she in race relations. I tried being a hall warden; Olivia founded a black dance group and got into community work, later becoming a lecturer in social psychology at Bradford. Our younger son, Thomas, was born in 1979.

Then it all fell apart. Olivia, under great pressure, developed paranoia. I couldn't handle this; in 1981 I fled. After divorce and dire rows, in 1985 when I taught for a term in Santa Cruz, CA, she suggested I take Will along; we had an idyllic time. But then she got worse, and I felt I must seek custody. In 1987 I moved to Shipley, where I live still; Will and Tom joined me.

But for poor Will it was too late. What I took for adolescent rebellion was acute depression. On 20 March 1992, a day after I flew off to lecture in Australia - I can't forgive myself, but I was very stressed and felt the break might help - Will took all his anti-depressants at once; finally he found peace. That put Olivia back in hospital: though out since, she's still not well. Medically retired, she lives in Bradford with regular crises. I don't know how to help her heal.

Thank God, though, for Tom: fine and whole, a joy and comfort. A real all-rounder, he played schools rugby for Yorkshire; he also played clarinet, trumpet, horn, and piano. After Bradford Grammar, in his gap year he worked for an event management firm and then toured Australia and NZ before going to Oxford (New College) to read PPP (pyschology, mainly). In no fewer than 3 choirs, such as Schola Cantorum and the Oxford Gargoyles, he toured Japan, the US et al. He also wrote theatre music - including, after he graduated last summer, a production of The Tempest starring Richard Briers as Prospero. In January he began a full-time job created for him by the same events firm: liaising with one of their top clients, a pharmaceutical major. He plans to make a business career, but also to go on composing. At 23, he's far older than I.

I didn't remarry. After belated teenage flings in the early 1980s, since 1985 Linda Woodward has been a cornerstone of my life. It's an unusual relationship: we don't live together, since I moved to Shipley to be with my children. We've had ups and downs, but I owe her so much.

Meanwhile my career took an unexpected turn. Korea had long fascinated me as a test case of capitalist vs socialist development. At first, as an infantile leftist, I backed the North. In 1982 I spent a month in South Korea, and had to rethink. In 1983 I began writing on Korea for the Economist Intelligence Unit; more such work followed. I enjoyed this quasi-journalism, while university life began to pall with endless assessments, restructurings and suchlike nonsense. In 1993 I was hired to write a monthly report on North Korea published in Seoul, and so went part-time at Leeds. In 1997, when I turned 50, I took early retirement. No regrets. Universities in UK are no longer temples of the mind; mad managerialism has ruined them, and much else.

So late in life I finally found my metier. I'm glad to be free, and lucky to have a niche market. I make my living as an analyst of Korea: North and South, politics and economics. I write for business mainly (EIU, Oxford Analytica etc), and broadcast for the BBC et al. Besides some 20 trips to Korea so far, I've lectured on it all over the world. I am truly grateful for this life, and have no plans to stop just yet: perhaps just wind down gradually, and try to be less busy.

Still, there are other things I'd like to do too before it's too late. Music is vital - Radio 3 is on continuously, and I go to gigs, mainly folk or jazz - but I no longer perform, and rarely write. Yet at age 17 I set all Shakespeare's songs for guitar; that won me a scholarship, but there I left it. Tom's composing inspires me to perhaps one day do more in this direction. But when?

Poetry is another love. I had a great sideline job chairing A-level and GCSE day conferences in various subjects, but poetry was best. Here again, I write: in my teens I won a literary prize (runner-up) with a poem later anthologized for schools. All my life I've penned limericks and light verse. Now I write haiku, by the hundred. I may venture to put a few up on this site.

What else? Politically I'm of no fixed abode now, but a liberal at heart. My country is Europe, or Yorkshire: I've no plan to move (and too much clutter to). Spiritually, I avoid churches yet am searching, albeit not hard enough, for I know not what. If saved at all, it's thanks to loving and supportive family and friends, whom I cherish even as I also must have solitude. Therapy, especially gestalt, has helped me through: if you need it, don't let a stiff upper lip stop you. So has dancing: late in life I've got into Northern Soul! - also helps the waistline, for I enjoy my food and drink. Used to run marathons, too; now I walk. So it goes. I could go on. I do go on.