My first radio broadcast was at the age of six when I recited a poem on Children’s Hour on New Zealand Radio’s 3ZB. While still at secondary school I broadcast again, for Children’s Hour, on pets. A subject about which I knew very little. Then from 2000, I broadcast on New Zealand National Radio, ‘People and Places’, which became ‘Simon Acland’s Thoughts from Abroad’. These short talks were broadcast on Bank Holidays and during January, the New Zealand summer holiday period.