Who is Jack Hastie?
Currently, I am a husband, father, grandfather and, until very recently, dog walker. I am getting to be an old codger and I potter about – grumpily!
In previous incarnations I have been a senior lecturer in Further Education, an Open University tutor, a Scottish mountain leader and an amateur archaeologist – site supervisor with the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1961.
I exhibit minor eccentricities such as being a lifelong supporter of Glasgow Tigers speedway team, still mourning the demise of Third Lanark FC, and being so technologically inept that, like Scout in Go Set a Watchman, I am incapable of operating anything more complex than a safety pin. I am also an animal lover – all dogs, cats, horses; most birds; some humans.
My latest literary effort The Adventures of Sindbad the Scottish School Teacher is now out in a limited edition and I am available to give a talk From Abu Simbel to Akureyri about my travels.
but essentially I have always been
a DREAMER
I have dreamed two children's novels and a number of short stories.
But those who dream occasionally have nightmares, as some of my adult fiction and poetry testify.
a SCEPTIC and REBEL
I nearly always find myself on the side of the underdog.
I`m a member of the SNP and the Humanist Society of Scotland, and a former regular contributor to Freethinker magazine.
Whenever I find myself agreeing with the majority, my gut instinct tells me I must have got it wrong.
a WANDERER
Physically I have wandered among the Munros, along the mountainsides of Iceland, Lapland, Greece, Lebanon, Sinai, the Alps and the Pyrenees, and around the volcanoes of the Canary Islands.
Mentally, through the “Faery lands forlorn” of my childhood and those of my children and grandchildren, but also through the haunted and sometimes demonic landscapes of infinite space and time, and fate.
