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Robert Turner

Robert Turner writes...
Have you ever thought about how many hundreds of adjectives and similes there are nestled comfortably in the English language that have migrated there from the animal kingdom? Continual references to animals simply go unnoticed in our everyday speech. For instance, before a wedding the women go on a hen night while the men go on a stag night, and when they have children they commonly refer to them as little goats. Clearly the animal kingdom is not only deeply evident in our DNA but through our language it has also become a subliminal part of our mental make up. When I was naughty as a youngster my mother would call me a little monkey - and some small influence from that has ridden on my shoulder ever since.

Forty years later, as an Eastern traveller, I determined to make the transition from being a letter writer to completing a book of adventures. Then I discovered that the place in South India where I found myself settling down for the task ahead was widely known as Kishkindha, the mythical Kingdom of the Monkeys and Bears. Surely, I thought, a journal penned at ground level from here will prove itself to be lively. While in the quieter hours there were the past escapades from a dozen years on the road to fill in. So it was that my travel biography came to be written; and so it is now that if I give any more details away here, I shall be spoiling the plot for those who may like to read the full story. . . .
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