Road to My Horizon by Winchester resident Tim Parker

Tim’s book is an absorbing, amusing and sometimes controversial account of the life and times of an unusual man who has lived most of his life in and around Winchester.

He now lives in retirement in Crawley where he and his wife, and their adored flat-coated retrievers, regularly open their garden to the public as part of the National Gardens Scheme.

Tim Parker is a successful entrepreneur who has had four careers; in journalism, commerce, education and as a sports coach.

His first job was as a cub reporter for the Hampshire Chronicle. He paints a vivid picture of life in Winchester in the late 1950s and early 1960s for a young journalist and occasional tearaway, until he was eventually fired for going too far too often. He moved on to starting and developing his own company fitting strip lights in shops, growing the business to cover many of the major stores in Britain, and turning himself into a millionaire.

Then when a desire to give something back to society took over he acquired a well-known, but failing, prep school near Salisbury and turned around its fortunes. His principal passion was for coaching young sports people, for which he had a special gift. Two of his own children went on to become international athletes.

Finally, he spent a large part of his active retirement cruising the Bay of Biscay, North Africa and the Mediterranean in one of his motor yachts. His yachts’ travel log records navigating over 50,000 sea miles and visiting in excess of 200 ports.

Sitting out Covid lockdown, Tim felt compelled to use his time to describe his life in a book so as to share his adventures and thirst for life. Naturally outward-going, Tim wanted to entertain and educate a wider audience about his experiences, both good and edgy, and to set out his opinions on life, some of which are controversial but all of them engrossing. As the memories tumbled out, he was faced with reconciling several contradictory events and courses of action, as well as recounting many tales of adventure.

Tim found writing his book a cathartic experience. He was astonished that digging into memories began a process of uncovering even more memories and unlocking episodes in his life which had been completely buried by time and the stresses of living a life ‘on the edge’. He was able to recall episodes from World War II, getting bombed by a German flying bomb at St John’s Wood in London and fielding candy and chewing gum thrown at him and his brother by American GIs outside his grandparents’ home in Harestock Road, Winchester. The whole of Hampshire had become a kind of military camp in preparation for D Day with the US 9th Infantry Division in town.

He remembers being driven through the Westgate before it got separated from the old city wall and became a pedestrian way and a monument to the past. Tim has been to and seen large parts of the world and recalling events and stories from all corners has made him realise the effect geography has upon your own behaviour and what you do next. Geographical changes (where you are) increase time and improve memory, in his view, and his book regularly refers to the ‘the sliding doors’ effect on life.

The Road to My Horizon is published by the Short Publishing Co Ltd of Winchester and copies can be purchased at P&G Wells on College Street.