‘Maxwell’. Team Manager & Dogsbody
The guy who’s responsible for putting this madcap scheme together.
Aged 63 he’s spent most of his life working in and around the timber trade servicing the building industry.
Currently employed by a small privately-owned company designing and manufacturing Trussed Rafters, retirement looms – allowing more time to be spent with a doting wife, two married daughters and five grandchildren.
However, before that there’s a dream to fulfil in the form of organising a 10,000-mile drive to Mongolia. Interests include writing and classic cars, and currently enjoys a 698cc turbocharged three-cylinder Smart Roadster Coupe. It makes the four-pot 1200cc proposition look positively archaic….
Team-Phoenix Driver #1
Married and now just the wrong side of fifty, Paul regularly drives on the wrong side of the road – so driving a 1200cc granny-basher on the Continent should be easy.
Attributes? Paul has several – and having relatives in Switzerland means we can save the cost of at least two night’s accommodation. Having more relatives ‘somewhere in India’ means we have another convenient bolthole should we get hopelessly lost after Afghanistan.
Paul is also a mechanic whose favourite tool is a 2lb lump-hammer
Teanm-Phoenix Driver #2
Another pensioner – and sadly one who’s well past their sell-by date. Still sporting a full head of skin, we’ve got it on good authority that their sole reason for joining Team-Phoenix is to increase our chance of fielding ‘the team with the largest average age’!
Team-Phoenix Webmaster
One of the most important members of any team – particularly during the early stages of web building and fundraising – is the webmaster. Our webmaster is undoubtedly the youngest member of the team, a member who fortunately has all his feet on the ground. Furthermore, he also sports more hair than a 1960’s hippie and loves having a good gnaw…. Yaks, beware!
Team-Phoenix Backroom Girls
We’ve all seen those awful black-&-white films that depict the dingy Operations Room of a WWII fighter squadron – and the attractive, fair-faced young WAAF’s who lean innocently – but provocatively – over the edge of the table to push tiny wooden models of aircraft around.
Here are the Team-Phoenix equivalents, bless them.
The Bearded Shaman
Twenty-five years ago our dedicated In-House Advisory Consultant was a beer-swilling member of the Cairo Contingent of the Hash-House Harriers, otherwise known as the CC-HHH
Lean and youthful; he was keen to see the sandy bits of the world [usually through the dimpled bottom of a brown bottle] when not fighting ferocious oil-well fires in true ‘Red Adair’ style or building skyscraper blocks – and swimming-pools – for rich, young Saudi.
Today, our Adventurer Extraordinaire lives with his black-&-white cat in a small, sleepy suburb of Sevenoaks. The VW-powered dune-buggy has been replaced with a Smart Roadster, and the dour, everyday dromedary has been swapped for the sort of Citroen my granny wouldn’t be seen dead in.
Age brings experience: he’s convinced that we’re all mad but has thrown his weight – and his not inconsiderable expertise with a spread-sheet – behind this worthwhile project. Even better, he’s done it all free-of-charge for a slice of the action!