Much of my time was spent in Afghanistan, reporting on the last years of the Taliban's rule, driving on battered tracks through deserts and hills, meeting warlords in bunkers and clerics in ministries, covering earthquakes and skirmishes, and writing about a little-known militant group called al-Qaida.
Over the last ten years, this 27-year-old LA minstrel has recorded hundreds upon hundreds of songs in the front room of wherever he's been staying, singing and playing guitar, bass, keyboards and his own style of "mouth drums" (kind of rock'n'roll beatboxing) into a battered 8-track.
Occasionally prone to romanticising couriers and their battered, stickered, steel track bikes, Chappell does still manage to debunk some of the myths that have accreted over the decades.
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In the foreground, in track pants and battered trainers, Opoku-Addaie is swaying, twitching and shadow-boxing.
Even as his battered car spun off the track and onto the grass, there was little concern.
Almost exactly a year ago, Rupert Soames, the chief executive of Serco, announced a huge rights issue intended to put the battered outsourcing giant back on track.
In fact, the 55-year-old new boss of BAA may be just the man to get the troubled retailer back on track and its battered stock flying high again.
So I was genuinely shocked and upset to learn of his death last night, rushing to my bookshelves and tracking down my battered old Herbert paperbacks.
Knowing he had done what he could, he joined the refugees crowding the battered 4x4s and trucks on the tracks south.
We hitched a ride in a battered pick-up truck to where the track to the hot springs of Recowata forked off the main road.
