I made contact with Colwyn's wife Hilary to let her know we were thinking about him and to ask for an update.
To give a bit of information (I hope this is ok Hilary), I can share that Colwyn had a stroke a couple of years ago which has left him with Aphasia which has caused him speech/communication and mobility issues. I've known this for some time but didn't know if it was my place to share it - but I know so many members want to hear how he's doing.
As I mentioned previously,
he tries to keep up to date with CBF so I'm sure he'd be delighted to read any messages you guys have for him!I'll start, with a Turkish Tale to remind him of when we had some fun putting together a website about Fethiye. I did the website, all the sections like bars & restaurants, local places to visit etc and (unwisely perhaps) had always wanted to do a History of Fethiye section. Now that is really a History of Turkey section and there was a problem - there's so bleedin' much of it! Anatolia, Lycia, The Persians, Romans, Byzantine Empire, Greeks, Huns, Ottoman Empire, Ataturk & the Modern Turkey - and plenty more.
Not really knowing if I had missed any out, or which order they went in, I wrote the whole thing and was relatively happy with it. But I was nervous because you could miss out an important part and upset/insult someone. So I knew just the man to ask to just check it through for me - a well travelled Turkeyite called Colwyn.
Colwyn was most agreeable and I sent the whole lot over to him. I asked him to feel free to change bits or move them around, not to feel awkward to tell me any little bits that were inaccurate or even missing.
About 48 hours later he emailed back. I opened the attachment to see how many edits he'd put in/taken out - and I had no idea where my work had gone. Colwyn must have read it, binned it and started again - he'd written the whole history from scratch
I copied & pasted it into the website and found good pictures of Persian invaders, maps of the Ottoman Empire etc to go alongside "my" work.
For that one section I put "by Keith Campbell & Colwyn Jones" and remember I was so proud to do so. I should have written 3%/97% too...
I remember showing him the page first and thanking him again for such wonderful knowledge and interesting writing. He wrote back and said he thought the pictures were very good
Miss you my friend, hope this brought back some memories and made you smile.
