“LIFE is like a bus ride,” former travel rep Howard Potts states in the opening lines of his freshly-published autobiography, A Mile in My Shoes.
He continues: “People get on and off throughout your life; some stay the whole journey and some just stay a short distance. Unfortunately for me, the first people to get off my bus were my parents and I was only five.”
The affable 63-year-old, was born and bred in Sedgefield and after attending agricultural college looked destined to work on the farm.
Instead, after a series of family tragedies, he set off on an adventure, spending most of his 20s and early 30s living in some of the most popular tourist destinations, working for the UK’s second-largest tour operators.
After a three-year interlude in London, working for another holiday company, he made his way north, settling in Cleasby, where he still lives today.
He said: “I went to agricultural college and then to work on a local farm, but I knew it wasn’t for me. At 23 I went to work abroad and spent a couple of years with club 18-30. I was in Spain for three years, then did another eight in Greece and in between had time in Austria, Morocco and Israel. It was the life of riley.”
The book, which he describes as “Lemony Snickets with some serious misadventures”, came about after he attended therapy to deal with issues from his childhood.
Mr Potts added: “At some time you have to face your gremlins. I didn’t realise until I did therapy that I had been running away most of my life and not dealing with issues of abandonment. As soon as I finished therapy the book fell out of my head straight onto the pages. It’s basically my life before therapy.”
The book, which is available to purchase on Amazon, in either paper or hardback, costs £9.99.
“It has also gone out to ten major retail outlets including Barnes and Noble in America,” he said.
