Footnote
by Wendy Arnold
(From Their Manners Noted)
Sadly the adventures we had in Panama and thereafter will never now be told. Mick hugely enjoyed our time in Panama, exploring its jungles, encountering its Indian tribes in the Darien Gap and on the San Blas Islands, and learning many new songs.
Following this we spent an idyllic five years in the pre-tourist era Arabian Gulf, where Mick introduced me to traditional Arab culture, and showed me all the different countries round the Gulf, and Persia, and was happy in his many friendships from rulers to depot workers. We then returned to Africa, to Khartoum, taking with us our newly-born daughter Tiffany, and this time being able to meet and get to know local people, as Mick travelled up through the deserts and down to the southern swamps.
Honduras followed, its forest still intact, glorious with huge flowering giants and orchids. After this Mick left Shell and worked for the Japanese trading house Itocho, commuting monthly to Tokyo while the family lived in a big rambling Edwardian house in Oxford, acquiring from them the affectionate double-edged nickname “yokozuna” indicating a (presumably portly) Sumo champion of champions who has gained victory with style.
He left them for his final job with Charter Oil in the USA, where we lived on the edge of a Florida swamp with alligators on our lawn. Here he became friend and informal advisor to several US Senators and two Presidents. Retiring at fifty, he had time to enjoy being Fellow of an Oxford College, and watch our grandchildren grow up.
Ill health finally overtook him, but he lived to celebrate our Golden Wedding, and to give me, as he had promised, the manuscript for this his second book on my birthday. And then he died, quietly, and with me, at home.
Our son Robin said of him at his funeral:
“He was charming, funny, absurdly generous, learned, a great raconteur, salesman, and a romantic to the core.”