Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
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Better late than never. I’m at Gatwick Airport, heading out to the Duty Free Show of the Americas, three days later than originally planned and now delayed further due to a technical issue onboard. At this rate I may get there in time for the exhibition breakdown.
I’d already been tapping away at my keyboard for an hour or so when I heard a familiar Scottish tone – “Mr Moodie! How are you?”
I looked up to to see Fraser Dunlop, Global Head of Food for World Duty Free Group, who is also bound for Orlando.
The question “How are you?” asked in either direction is of special significance to the two of us. I am always extra pleased to see Fraser, especially when he looks as well as he does today. It’s coming up to four years since that fateful day of 30 April 2009 when he was told he had “inoperable, incurable” secondary cancer and just months to live. His chances of survival were rated as 1%. Somehow he defied those odds.
He was a mighty inspiration to me when I began my fight against stomach cancer back on July 9 2010. To bump into each other on terra firma rather than at the Pearly Gates all these years later is a good feeling. Maybe we’ll have a celebratory glass of Champagne on the flight across the Atlantic.
My interview with Fraser, conducted in August 2011 for our inaugural e-Zine, still ranks as the most moving story I have ever written (and maybe ever read). If you’ve not read it, click on this link. It’s stood the test of time. Like Fraser and I.
