The Kemp and Young series caters for candidates for certification as First Officer or Master Mariner. Notes on Meteorology aims to meet the needs of examination candidates, and also provides an explanation of weather systems for yachtsmen and others interested in meteorology.
John Frederick Kemp was a sailor for ten years in UK merchant ships. He then “swallowed the anchor” and, as he puts it, degenerated into an academic. He became Dean of a Faculty, but took early retirement, as an Emeritus Professor, to care full-time for his wife Shirley, who was suffering from Dementia.
The following eight years were challenging, but he coped by observing the humorous side of the events that made up their lives. He recorded these in letters to his GP, because he thought that Doctors generally have sad lives as a result of meeting so many sick people every day. Later, when Shirley had passed away, he wrote this material up as his first book, “Caring for Shirley”.
John is now in his eighties and, supposedly, retired in Arundel, UK, although his new wife, Shirley, says he is usually tinkering with several projects at any one time. The latest of these has been to write “Copse and Codgers” about two octogenarian, retired sailors. These characters, Bill and Shorty, find themselves inadvertently caught up with some militant environmentalists, and there are many twists in a closely woven plot before they are able to extricate themselves.