Always on the day before my long haul sales trips, I would continue my advertisement sales telephone pitching till 5pm in Sutton.

My work consisted in selling advertising contracts to manufacturers in the electricity industry – power generation, transmission and distribution. Our business-to-business magazine was respected and the worldwide circulation generated sales for advertisers. Our major revenue came from clients who gathered conveniently in great numbers at industry trade fairs.

When my colleagues had all gone home, I’d finalise my paperwork for the trip ahead. Often I’d be driving the 3 miles home from the office at 2am. There I would pack, unpack and repack my suitcase and briefcase downstairs quietly, not wake the family. My son has told me he used to hear noises downstairs, but thought it better not to interrupt. The taxi arrived at 6am to take me and my exhibition posters to one of the London airports.

The flight and connecting flights filled me with tremendous excitement, the thrill of the early explorers. I have never lost this adrenalin rush when travelling by air. It is a pleasure analogous to my being taken on fairground rides by my Dad.

I developed my own method of catching up on lost sleep on long plane journeys.

Following tips from my Dad, I’d board early, and bag a window seat. As soon as we had reached cruise altitude, I would ask the air crew not to wake me for meals. I’d inflate my rubberised fabric camping pillow, place it on my chest, and tie my adjustable webbing trouser belt over it. This kept my spine upright, preventing me from falling forward asleep.

I would tie a strip of close-weave black cotton around my head, blocking out all light. I’d cut it from the same blackout curtain material which my parents had used to help protect them from being targeted by WW2 bombers flying home looking to jettison unused ordnance.

Odd, wasn’t it, no one would ever think to wake me up.

After landing and checking into the prebooked hotel, I would set up my magazine’s exhibition stand the day before the expo.

Not for me the standard free-time activity of my fellow European advertising sales colleagues. While they gathered in the hotel lounges to booze their evenings away on expense account, after every day’s work was done, I’d shower, change and spend much of the night wandering the streets taking photos.

I took delight in these nighttime forays in Beijing, Guanzhou, Hong-Kong, Mumbai, Houston, Cincinnati and even Tokyo.

In Johannesburg in 1995, I befriended my taxi driver, who would drive me between hotel and exhibition centre daily. I asked him to drive me to places I’d otherwise never have seen.

I made the same connection with a taxi driver in Dubai a bit later. He knew the captain of a dhow, a traditional wooden trading vessel. At 6am, he drove me from my hotel to Dubai Creek. After a brief introduction, I boarded the vessel dressed in my work suit and tie. I shot several rolls of film even in low ambient light below deck. Fun beyond all boyish imagining!

I was highly sensitive to the privilege of this job which flew me to exotic places usually accessible only to lucky lottery winners. I should mention that my very first sales trip to a trade exhibition was in Bournemouth, my current home town, 33 years ago!

My experiences of these nine years of jet-setting closely paralleled those of my own late Father.

He was an international conference interpreter, and one of the founders of that liberal profession. He travelled extensively all over the world for much of every year from the mid-1940s till the 1970s.

He would not sit and drink with colleagues in the hotel after his international conferences were over for the day.

He’d hire a car or a scooter and go as far into the local bush, underworld, or remote villages as he possibly could.

He invariably came home with utterly amazing stories of his quite wild adventures. Most of these escapades he would have talked his way into and used his gift of the gab to talk his way out of!

His tale of a collision with a wild pig in a forest in Malaysia was one I best recall, because he used to retell it at family gatherings. His conference had ended. He left his hotel and as usual he found a garage which rented him a scooter so he could go on adventures of exploration.

To shorten this story, he got his grazed head bandaged up, and a cut in his leg stitched. He went back to the Chinese garage owner.

My Dad said placatory words to this effect.

“I know and I am sorry I am late returning your scooter.”

Silence from the owner.

My Dad continued, “Of course, I will pay you for the extra time of hire for your excellent vehicle.”

The man held up his hand for silence. In deliberate tones, he said,

“We Chinese say, we do not argue with a wounded man.”

He passed on to me his self-taught travel skills. He taught me to walk past uniformed manned barriers with a confident smile and a subdued jaunty step. He gave me to interpret “Strictly Private! Access Forbidden To Unauthorised Personnel” as “Please come in Peter Pilley! You are warmly welcome here!”

Moved beyond words by this dignified and final refusal of recompense, my Father left and returned to pack and fly home.

Here’s another recollection. My Dad had taken an internal flight, possibly in East Africa. 

In those days, the 1950’s, these aircraft would briefly land to allow for refuelling. 

On this occasion, Teddy was thrilled to be allowed off the plane. The fuel was kept in metal drums. It was pumped to the plane by hand. My Dad always carried a Minox miniature camera in each pocket, one with colour, the other with black and white film. The format was 8 x 11mm film in cartridges of 50 shots. Over many years of intercontinental travel, he took quantities of photos. The prints were 6.4 x 8.9 cm. He used photo albums. I have many today.

The time came for the passengers to board and for the flight to continue. Mr. Pilley was nowhere to be seen. 

Soon this jungle landing strip was ringing out with shouts of, “Mr. Pilley!”

Looking pleased with himself, and having bagged good photos of tropical butterflies and giant bamboo, to the relief of the entire complement of passengers and crew, Mr. Pilley wandered back.

My late and great Father’s most lasting and valuable legacy was to have taught me all he knew about the effective techniques of Hitch-hiking, in the UK and Europe. While studying at St John’s College Oxford, he was already a pioneer of Lorry Jumping. Low-loader trucks in the 1920s were slow enough to allow a young man to throw himself and his backpack on board.

I did precisely this at 4am on the Cromwell Road in summer 1966. I worked out the right interval after pressing the button at a pedestrian controlled crossing on the Cromwell Road to “trap” my lorry.

I jumped on a low-loader flat top. Unnoticed, I held on to some rope. I was bounced along on the M4 to the amusement of overtaking lorry drivers who didn’t give me away!

My Father was a natural raconteur, and he loved retelling his adventures to family gatherings. Though I remember only scraps of a few of them, I now have a stock of my own tall tales to tell.

I can recall in detail how I was lost, picked up and taken off the street at 2am by three secret police in a middle east town. I was questioned politely in depth and in impeccable English.

This night-time encounter was civil and low-key. However, I was not born yesterday. If I had aroused their suspicion, or if my photos of that evening had been developed, I knew I could have been detained for a very long time.

In the end, they returned me to my hotel after a good-natured night time tour in the latest model of Mercedes-Benz upholstered in white leather. The tour was ilustrated with their own amusing stories of mayhem at the time of the recent Gulf War. Please don’t ask me to elaborate, I cannot compromise my sense of self-preservation.