If it is true that a picture paints a thousand words, then Richard Bryan\u2019s LifeBook should probably be 2,000 pages long rather than 208.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> The title, <\/span>The Book What I Wrote<\/span><\/i>, speaks volumes about Richard\u2019s self-deprecating approach to detailing a lifetime of adventures, and I would dare anyone to pick up his book and not laugh at some of the many brilliant pictures inside, including:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> There are also plenty of snaps of Richard, the family man and businessman, and these pictures perfectly complement his many stories from an eventful life that are hilarious, insightful and thoughtful.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Richard\u2019s life was not always a barrel of laughs. He was just 10 years of age when he lost his mother, and there was a long and sometimes difficult period of adjustment when his father married again a few years later.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Despite attending a fee-paying school, Richard\u2019s younger days were all about sport rather than education, and his O level results were terrible, with passes in English and English Literature but little else. He left school to start work at a builders\u2019 merchants, admitting, \u201cI can\u2019t imagine what Dad must have thought after paying for my expensive education, but it certainly opened my eyes, going from a moderately middle-class background to a very working-class pool of workers.\u201d That move was to hold him in good stead when he later established his own successful businesses.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> In 1972, Richard married Sally, and thus began many years of happily married life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Richard was always willing to take a gamble in both his business and home life, something that Sally had to learn to appreciate. This included the time when he bought a derelict cottage with no electricity or running water and only then broke the news to her that they were moving in. Among the issues at the property were water running into the lounge whenever there was heavy rain and mice scurrying between the stonework and the drywall lining. However, the spectacular views were a prime motivator, and, over time, Richard and Sally made it into a much-loved home.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Richard\u2019s daughters, Emma and Katie, were 14 and 11 respectively when their brother, James, was born.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Richard\u2019s sense of adventure was perhaps never better demonstrated than by his 50th birthday celebrations, when he took a week off to fly to New York on Concorde to meet an old pal for dinner, returned to join 12 friends for a hotel stay and golf and then took the family away for a few days. For Sally\u2019s 50th, they went to Venice on the Orient Express, on which he shared a dinner table with Denis and Mark Thatcher.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> His daughters\u2019 weddings allowed Richard to show off his eccentricities. When Emma married James, Richard got a pantomime buddy to dress up as a mobile lavatory and enter the reception in the middle of Richard\u2019s speech (Richard had long ribbed Emma about her bathroom habits!).\u00a0<\/span><\/p> When Katie married Stuart a year later, Richard had someone dress up as Gary Lineker and get down on one knee to ask the bride to elope with him!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Richard greatly enjoyed his holidays, even if these often seemed to be a test of endurance. Among his many escapades were smashing a narrowboat into reinforced concrete (giving him the chance to shout the immortal words, \u201cBrace yourselves!\u201d) and falling overboard; tumbling into a gully in Mauritius while practising his golf swing (and parading around a luxury resort\u2019s dining room to show off his wounds to other guests); and watching the furniture blow off the hotel balcony during a week of dreadful weather on the hot-spot island of Malta.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Richard made the money for his homes and holidays by building up his own businesses, starting out by running a spray-paint operation from the flat he shared with his pal, Colin, before he married. This took off, and Brandon Hire Ltd officially started trading in 1971. Shops and depots were added as the business thrived and the number of employees hit 60, and in 1989 the company was floated on the Stock Exchange. It was valued at \u00a37.5 million.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> However, the outside influences of investors, shareholders and pension companies in the new set-up proved frustrating, and, after an ensuing merger that saw Colin quit and Richard banging heads with fellow directors, Richard walked away after 26 years with the company. However, he was soon back in the driving seat as he and Colin reunited to purchase a struggling division of their former company and completely turned it around. <\/span><\/p> Richard also got into other ventures, including property, cattle breeding, a public house, costume hire and stocks-and-shares dealing. The costume hire fitted perfectly with his love of pantomime, which, on one occasion, saw him take to the stage dressed as a ballet dancer to perform a routine from <\/span>The Nutcracker<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> One of the laugh-out-loud moments in Richard\u2019s book is when it was announced that a special visitor was to open the village fete to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. The lanes around the village were closed, and the entire village was cheering and waving flags as a black saloon with royal trimmings pulled up. The ‘royal’ couple (Richard made up as the Queen and a pal as the Duke of Edinburgh) stepped out of the car and were ushered to a designated area to greet the young children anxious to meet the Queen. It was all going well until a little girl stood in front of him and said, in a very disappointed and accusing voice, \u201cYou\u2019re not the Queen!\u201d <\/span><\/p> That same day, Richard won the knobbly knees contest \u2013 his prize was to be put in the stocks and pelted with sponges!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> In later life, Richard, a dedicated blood donor who was honoured following his 250th donation, volunteered at Bath Royal United Hospital (where a patient passed away while in a wheelchair being pushed by Richard) and became a trustee for the League of Friends. However, he continued to look for fun, and, with a group of pals from his local pub, he formed the Ridiculous Dicky Bow Club. This started with a meal out in Bath and finished with the group standing on the steps of La Scala, Milan, singing a bit of opera! For Richard, it was just one more adventure in a life packed full of wonderful memories.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p> \u00a0<\/p> Written by Stephen Pitts, LifeBook Memoirs editor<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If it is true that a picture paints a thousand words, then Richard Bryan\u2019s LifeBook should probably be 2,000 pages long rather than 208.\u00a0 The title, The Book What I Wrote, speaks volumes about Richard\u2019s self-deprecating approach to detailing a lifetime of adventures, and I would dare anyone to pick up his book and not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"What's New in the Library? The Book What I Wrote - Private Autobiography","_seopress_titles_desc":"If it is true that a picture paints a thousand words, then Richard Bryan\u2019s LifeBook memoir should probably be 2,000 pages rather than 208.","_seopress_robots_index":"","content-type":"","_metasync_otto_title":"","_metasync_otto_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[219,217],"tags":[107,118,124,127,130,120,131,122],"class_list":["post-15216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leaving-a-legacy","category-private-autobiography","tag-book-reveal","tag-legacy","tag-life-story","tag-memoirs","tag-memory","tag-private-autobiography","tag-recollections","tag-storytelling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A<\/span> tough start in life<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>
No electricity or running water, and mice scurrying around<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>
A walking toilet for his daughter\u2019s wedding<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>
Brace yourselves!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>
Building a multi-million-pound business<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>
Stand up for the, er, Queen!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>
Giving back to the community<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Steve-P-photo-245x300.jpg\")
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