Thinking back on it I must have known 'Twig' almost longer than I knew my own mother. The first time I bumped into him was in 1972. At the time I was farming in Tanzania with cousins, surnamed Wood, on magical Mount Kilimanjaro. The farm was known as Engushal and the father of the house was Michael, the plastic surgeon protege of Sir Archibald 'Archie' Macindoe, who gave new faces to so many severely burned pilots during World War II. They became known as 'Sir Archie's Guinea Pigs', and formed themselves into the famous Guinea Pig Club. Michael Wood set up the East African Flying Doctor Services, which continues, in vastly enlarged form, as the African Medical and Research Foundation. He was later knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and on being asked by a journalist why he had become a plastic surgeon in the first place, he replied, with a twinkle, that it was because the Flying Doctors couldn't afford a real one.
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