After I left the navy and got back from a year backpacking around the world, I was 23 and I didn’t know what to do next. I had five different ideas and couldn’t decide between them so I let fate decide.

My choices:

1. Teach English as a foreign language. I applied to a school that would send me off around the world.

2. Apply to Cambridge University. I wanted to study physics.

3. Take an adult education class in software engineering. I had been good at programming as a kid. Seemed like a good way back into it.

4. Get a job on a superyacht. I applied for a job in Antibes in the South of France.

5. I was trained as an electronic engineer in the navy. I applied for a job maintaining satellite monitoring equipment on Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

I decided to apply for them all and whichever came in first, I would take that job.

The software thing happened first so that’s what I chose but on the very first day of class, I got a big fat envelope from Antibes with tickets to fly down for an interview on that superyacht. The Fates had already decided I was to be a software engineer and I followed their will but I often wonder what would have happened if I’d taken that job on the superyacht.

Walking around Bristol Harbour the other day, I discovered a school for superyacht crews.

I wonder if they accept old men like me.