Memories of a Lucky Dog is a string of experiences and anecdotes from the remarkable life of Andy Garnett.

He was an unhappy Eton schoolboy, destined to be a soldier, but was discharged from the army after six months. So he set out on motorbike adventures from Llanelli to Istanbul on a 1000cc Vincent before sharing a flat with George Melly in London. They came to life in the nights of 1950's Chelsea and Soho and organised extravagant club experiments in the East End.

After a failed Chelsea furniture business, Andy was brought into the Rotork engineering business by Jeremy Fry. He was based in Paris, but travelled the world. Six months in Japan, foolishly getting caught up in riots in Djakarta, hospitalised in Australia, and convalesence in an East london sailmaker's loft. There he met Polly. He fell in love at first sight and knew immediately that they would marry. It took two years to convince her, and they were married at their house in Tuscany in 1967.

They lived for two years in New York where Polly was a features editor for Vogue, before moving back to England and a beautiful 16c Gloucesterhire manor house where their three daughters were born.

Andy left Rotork to buy a failed business with an innovative idea to locate and fault find buried utility lines. Radiodetection became a world leader fourteen years later. By that time Andy was ill and helped to arrange an MBO for the company.

Meanwhile the family had moved to a tumbledown farmhouse in isolated, beautiful Somerset countryside. The meadows were declared an SSSI, alive with wild flowers and insects, celebrated in a book by Polly and Andy.

Andy continued to work part time, including two years in the Dyson company and with a charity teaching children to sing and dance. 3000 children benefitted.

Andy also wrote Steel Wheels, a well-received book celebrating his enthusiasm for the world of railways.



All in all, he is indeed such a Lucky Dog to have had such a varied happy life.