How The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy changed this educator’s life

From age 12, I had jobs in restaurants and shops. My dad was a pilot, and I was really into travelling. I took my first solo trip, to Paris, aged 13. My parents let me go everywhere I wanted; I just headed off on these great adventures with the pocket money I’d earned.

Then I got into backpacking around the world. I found England quite depressing at the time. You’d come up with this great idea, and everyone would say, “Oh, no, no, that will never work”.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy really resonated with me; I was going to the ends of the world, and I liked the idea of travelling around the universe. You really did hitchhike around countries in those days.

I had a gorgeous, surfy boyfriend, we used to go travelling together a lot, and then we started writing books together, and I realised I’d adopted a Douglas Adams way of writing.

I just love that style: when I read some of the stuff I wrote, it’s such an upbeat way of thinking. You can create the possible out of the impossible. It still inspires me.

We wrote a book called Utopia, the Reality, a picture book for adults based on these 10 characters that were an aspect of 10 worlds: hell, hunger, animality, tranquillity; they had this dual existence, on Earth and on this planet Utopia.

It was like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; very, very spacey.

There is so much in The Hitchhiker’s Guide that’s also in Hong Kong. Like the Vogons (the hyper-bureaucratic alien race who destroy the Earth), there’s the continual building of hypergalactic bypasses, with the plans stored in a basement. And then there are all these people like me who end up here: you backpack your way in, and 33 years later, you’re still here and you love the place.