Life

Until the end of 2009 I worked as a Software Developer with Fujitsu Services in Bracknell, Berkshire in the Thames Valley of England. After forty four years, mostly with one company I retired early, and now thoroughly enjoy our life.

My first school was Saint Mary's Convent in Wednesbury, now West Midlands. For most of the time I was one of four or five boys in a class of thirty.  It was quite a change to go from a small school in which most of the pupils were girls to an all boys senior school!

Which I did when I was eleven and attended Queen Mary's Grammar School in Walsall, West Midlands. I loved acting in the annual Shakespeare production of the Dramatic Society, playing Ophelia and Lady Macbeth (remember it was a boys only school), Clarence (Richard III), Marc Anthony (Julius Caesar) and Hector (Troilus & Cressida), the latter being very strange casting - I was thin then and not at all athletic - Thersites is what I wanted to play.

In 1965 I joined one of the earliest Computer Science Honours degree courses in the UK at what is now Wolverhampton University. I was sponsored at college by ICT which became ICL in 1968 and Fujitsu Services in 2002. On graduation I joined the company in Putney, West London, and apart from a period of two years in the mid-seventies with ATV Management Services in London, my whole career was with ICL/Fujitsu.

In November 1975 my sister Kate introduced me to Gaynor. Kate and Gaynor worked together as dental nurses, and Kate thought we had photography in common and invited both of us to dinner. When we met we found many more things in common, and we were married the following August. The best thing that ever happened to me.

Kate moved to Brighton on England's south coast in 1999 and now lives in Bournemouth. She has three great kids: Kimberley, Adam and Mark. Mark is the eldest and recently moved back to Brighton from Dubai where he worked for a number of years. He and his lovely wife Zena have a beautiful young daughter Isabella. Kimberley still works in Dubai and is married to Joe.

Our Mom Joan lost her battle with cancer in 2001.  Our kind, wise Dad Terry was tragically killed in a car accident in 1974, and I still miss him.

The subjects in which I am most interested are theatre, especially Shakespeare and his period, and computing.

Theatre

I've loved the theatre since childhood, encouraged by my late dad who formed a love of Shakespeare at school in Ireland. Gaynor and I visit the theatre whenever we find something interesting.

I read as much as I can about Shakespeare and the Globe playhouse where many of his plays were first performed. I am a Friend of Shakespeare's Globe, and see as many productions as I can at the reconstructed Globe playhouse on London's Bankside. I have been enjoying summer seasons there since 1997. Now we have the wonderful indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on the site playing throughout the winter too.

Computing

I built my first home computer, a NASCOM 1 from a kit in 1978. 1k RAM and 1k ROM, connected to a cassette recorder and TV. Writing Z80 machine code in binary, entered at the keyboard in hexadecimal, it seemed like magic nevertheless. Since then I've had a Sinclair ZX80, a BBC Micro with which I was very happy for a number of years, an Atari ST1024 which I used for a few months before acquiring an ICL PC. I'm now happy with my fourth or fifth PC which hasn't quite yet become obsolete.

Listening

I do enjoy some pop/rock music - Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and since my unsuccessful appearance on the British Channel 5 TV show Swapheads in 2002, I have come to appreciate Robbie Williams as a songwriter and performer.

I mostly listen to classical: Mahler, Richard Strauss, Wagner, Mozart, especially his operas and Requiem, but especially Beethoven. Beethoven's late work I find particularly exciting.

After being moved as a young teenager by the movie version of "West Side Story" I have lately come to appreciate the broad range of Leonard Bernstein's music.  I especially love "The Chichester Psalms".

When cooking, which I do twice or thrice a week now, I listen to tapes of BBC Radio 4 programmes that Gaynor records for me. I also try to keep up with "the everyday story of country folk" called The Archers on BBC Radio 4 the best talk radio in the world.