Glenn first encountered Hua Hin a decade ago when he visited friends from his hometown of Sheffield in England who resided here, though at the time Glenn himself had already decamped cold England for the warmer shores of Perth, Western Australia. A keen golfer to this day, Glenn then organised a golf tour to Hua Hin with Australian friends, and so began what Glenn hopes is his lifelong affair with this area of Thailand. Glenn mused that he now has three distinct friendship groups: those from his Sheffield days, the Australian gang, and the new tribe he has found locally, but they could easily intermingle because they are all similar. Glenn calls himself “a man’s man” and his close friends are all sporty types interested in football and golf, up for a drink or many, and not averse to occasional tom foolery. Glenn recounted an incident from his school days when he and friends daubed the car door handles of their “favourite” teacher with dog excrement, and also confessed to some football shenanigans which stopped short of hooliganism.

As a pre-teen, Glenn was exposed in Sheffield to the picketing of the national miners’ strikes of the early 1970s. Then, during his teens, Glenn was aware of the unrest and rioting across Britain. Combined, these led to him being a confirmed capitalist by the age of 14. Upon reflection, Glenn realised his first venture into the world of business was actually at the age of just nine, with a side-hustle at school where he brought a packet of his favourite McVitties dark chocolate biscuits and sold them individually to friends, at a profit .Glenn was the third of four children in the family, his father an engineer in the steel industry while his mother worked as a cleaner. Although he had a loving family, the outlook for youth in Sheffield was bleak, with few job opportunities and although Glenn didn’t know exactly what he wanted career-wise, he certainly knew working in a factory like his dad wasn’t it. Glenn’s fate awaited him elsewhere.

An entrepreneur in the full sense of the word, Glenn has taken on work in a wide and varied range of fields, learning to embrace change and innovation along the way. Glenn’s personable manner and his easy approach to strangers have been to his advantage in sales environments, of which there have been many. In the mid-80s, he answered an advertisement for a sales trainee position. With commission only, Glenn started in direct sales and soon was salesperson and then sales director by 1986. Glenn’s most profitable venture was the online recruitment company he established, the My Job Group which he ran successfully and then sold for a substantial sum in 2007, fulfilling his ambition to be successful enough to consider retirement in his early 40s. He was awarded an Entrepreneur of the Year award, but that is of less importance to Glenn than a simple, “Love you, Dad”. One of Glenn’s greatest strengths lies in acknowledging his own limitations and so employing staff whose abilities complement his own. Currently a restaurateur, Glenn states he is “very business-savvy, but could burn tea”.

A lifelong football fan and supporter of Sheffield Wednesday, Glenn was able to become a club sponsor for three years, which came with access to a corporate box for home games at Hillsborough stadium, his favourite place in the world. Glenn got himself a tattoo of the team on his arm when he was just 16 but was required to keep it covered with either long-sleeves or a bandage at school, football allegiance being such a volatile topic. Sheffield has two teams, and Sheffield United and supporters will always be referred to by Glenn and his cohort as “the pigs”. It is ironic that Glenn only ever used the corporate box once, since he had so many business associates and personal friends that deciding which dozen to invite and host, without upsetting anyone, left Glenn on the horns of a dilemma. Being a high-flying corporate sponsor was still no rein on Glenn’s love of a prank, as an advertising billboard of a pig, which he and a friend adorned in red and white stripes, in imitation of a Sheffield United jersey, will attest.

Glenn is also very much a family man, with two much-loved sons from his first marriage which ended in divorce in 2011. One of Glenn’s most petrifying moments was a push scooter incident when he was riding with his younger son who was just six at the time. The pair was descending a steep hill, hurrying to a business appointment, when the brake failed and Glenn had no option but to shove his son off the scooter before entering the busy intersection at the bottom. Glenn was barely injured however the youngster was left grazed and unconscious, with a couple of fractures, but alive. Even today, the potent memory provokes bodily symptoms. Glenn hasn’t worn a watch since, so strong is the feeling of responsibility for his son’s injuries.

After the sale of My Job, Glenn had again toyed with that idea of being a very young retiree, but was genuinely not capable of doing nothing, being by nature much better at working than relaxing. He ran a restaurant in Sheffield focusing on healthier grilled alternatives, breakfast items and panini and invested a sum of money in an Italian restaurant as well, gaining valuable insights into the hospitality industry. But by 2010, Glenn was becoming disillusioned with the situation in England and the direction the country was headed, believing that his hometown had lost its identity. With his marriage effectively in the process of dissolution and craving a new start, Glenn emigrated to Perth in Western Australia. This was no mean feat as Australia’s visa requirements are notoriously difficult to successfully navigate. Glenn needed to provide a $750,000 upfront bond to secure a business visa, contingent on his opening and running a business generating a specific turnover and creating new jobs, a task he relished.

Glenn became the proprietor of two restaurants, Deli Chichi and The Village Social, in close proximity to each other in the prestigious Perth suburb of Mount Claremont, the first almost immediately to fulfill visa requirements and the second a strategic decision to avoid local competition when a venue became available. Glenn is a romantic at heart and enjoys female companionship despite his protestations otherwise. He met his second wife in 2014 and they married in 2018, a step which may have been premature and which he now rues. Glenn blames the pressure of trying to run two restaurants during the Covid pandemic, coupled with his wife’s lack of empathy for that pressure, as the root of his second marriage failure. Although financial settlement between the pair is finalised, with Glenn losing both restaurants in the process, the divorce is still ongoing. Glenn may well choose to think long and hard before marrying again.

Another fresh start for Glenn was then on the cards, with a trip to Hua Hin in July 2023 reigniting his appreciation of the city. Glenn could see that it had everything he might need for a comfortable and easy life as he headed towards his 60s, except for an international airport. By September, Glenn was preparing to return to Australia to finalise his affairs, pack a couple of suitcases with life’s essentials and return to Thailand to start his “forever residence” in Thailand. One non-essential item that made the cut for admission to a suitcase was Glenn’s cherished 1979 match program for the “Boxing Day Massacre” when Sheffield Wednesday beat hometown rivals “the pigs” 4 – 0. That is priceless memorabilia which in this writer’s eye qualifies Glenn as a football tragic.

By sheer coincidence, it was just days before he was to board the plane back to Australia that Glenn met and made a strong connection with Sara, his Thai girlfriend. He told her to wait for him, that he was getting a divorce, he just had to go back to his country for a while to settle his affairs and he would be right back as soon as he could.  Sara told him much later that this is a classic tale that Western men have spun to countless Thai women to ensure sexual favours, much to his chagrin. When Glenn left, Sara never expected to clap eyes on him again. To their credit as a couple, Glenn went into overdrive and was back in Hua Hin a fortnight later and the pairing is going strong. One of the reasons for that surely lies in their shared enjoyment of working in the hospitality industry. While Sara is younger than Glenn, she is a highly qualified and independent woman with a Masters’ Degree, who, as a sommelier, has run her own wine bar. Glenn confesses that as a connoisseur, her nose and palate are far superior to his own.

It was spontaneity and serendipity which led to the opening of Tonic&Ginger on Soi 94 in September 2024. Glenn and Sara dined in the restaurant which formerly occupied the site, learnt it was for sale and Glenn purchased it within days and started the demolition the following week. From Glenn’s experience in sales, he knows that the best way to make people happy is to find out precisely what they want and give it to them. So, that is exactly where the team at Tonic&Ginger are aiming. It is fair to say that the signature dish is the Sunday roast, with up to 150 happy tummies each Sunday. The restaurant has the most comprehensive wine list and selection of gins outside the 5-star hotels in the city and outsells them outside of high season.

One of the key ingredients at Tonic&Ginger is loyalty. Glenn is thankful that he returned to Thailand to find Sara single. He has been able to secure the services of Josh, chef in his Australian restaurant, now here in Thailand. He has hired dedicated, hard-working staff who operate with Glenn in mutual loyalty, thus building and maintaining a solid and repeat customer base, both foreigners and Thais. Glenn beams with vicarious pride when someone compliments the chef and grits his teeth when people call the restaurant expensive, not understanding the costs. Of course, you get what you pay for, all over the world. Much as Glenn loves his involvement with his restaurant, he still finds time to golf two days a week and watch his team play, live-streamed if possible. For Glenn, let’s all hope the third time’s a charm, in terms of both country and relationship.