Another extract from 'Steaming Light' the memoir I wrote concerning my father's life

' A horse race The Captain Boxer stakes ending in a gun fight between a disappointed owner and the judge. Then a tranquil interlude high up in The Andes at Fundo Amelia, From where we visited a vineyard producing sweet white wine and aquadiente which is turned into pisco the national spirit. Our host was an old Watsonian from Edinburgh and as we looked out to the fifty foot piles of stoned and house size boulders at the bottom of his orchard he recounted how a few years ago the family had been taking breakfast when an eruption in the mountains had triggered a huge landslip, there was literally nowhere the family to run. So they watched as the torrent of rocks careered towards them pulling up among the fruit trees.'