Remembering my first meetings in Basel with my longtime colleague Peter Burleigh on his 60th birthday

In October 1995, I arrived at Basel's English Department and met my fellow new hire Peter Burleigh, who's been my colleague here ever since. In one of our first meetings, we spoke with his predecessor, who was from New Zealand, and afterwards, I did something I can no longer do: I drew a vowel chart of my pronunciation, with arrows showing how the vowels shifted for New Zealand pronunciation. I showed it to Peter, who knew phonetics better than I did; he said I'd drawn it just right. That's a sign of how I immediately felt we were a team – and we have been ever since. Happy 60th birthday to Peter! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 17 May 2022)