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Life
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I
as a Software Developer with in Bracknell, Berkshire in the Thames Valley
of England, and in September 2006 I reached the
landmark age of sixty entitling me to a bus pass. It's
the first time I've earned any such concession; there were
no student concessions when I was young, but I feel slightly
guilty travelling for free just because I'm suddenly 'old'.
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!
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Which I did when I was eleven and attended
Queen Mary's Grammar School in Walsall, West Midlands. It was founded
in 1554 when Queen Mary Tudor visited the town. 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 and not at all
athletic - Thersites is what wanted.
In 1965 I joined one of the earliest Computer Science Honours degree
courses in the UK at what is now .
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
has been with ICL/Fujitsu. In November 1975 my sister Kate introduced me to
. Kate and Gaynor
worked together as dental nurses, and Kate thought we had photography in common
and invited 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. She has three great kids:
Kimberley, Adam and Mark, the eldest who with his lovely
partner Zena lives in Dubai. Adam has set up a social web
site called
Our
Local Bar that you might like to visit. 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 is still
missed.
The subjects in which I am most interested are computing and .
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Computing
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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 Hex, 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 PC which hasn't quite yet
become obsolete.
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Theatre
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| I've loved the since childhood,
encouraged by my late dad who formed a love of 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 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 on London's Bankside. I enjoyed the
2004 season as I have all the previous summers since
Playgoing there can be very exciting.
In the evenings I sometimes lurk on the
humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
newsgroup. The news group was originally
created as a home for arguments about the authorship of work,
and these continue on a generally bad natured basis, with insults flying between those
who fervently believe that Edward deVere, Earl of Oxford was responsible for the works,
and those who cannot see why all the evidence pointing to 'the Stratfordian'
should have been forged. I think are clear, but
if you are interested look at the arguments.
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Recent Theatre Visits |
| Gaynor and I have never been
interested in musicals, but thanks to the terrific
Whatsonstage.com site led by Terri Paddick, we saw two
in the summer of 2004. A Funny Thing Happened on
the Way to the Forum at the Royal National Theatre was
great fun. Later in the summer we booked for Lord Andrew
Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White at London's Palace
Theatre mainly because Charlotte Jones had adapted the
Victorian Wilkie Collins' novel for the stage (and the
tickets were £10 each thanks to the Travelex season).
Ms Jones wrote the wonderful Humble Boy for the
National which we saw in 2002, and that was as mentally
stimulating and enjoyable as
Tom Stoppard, and we are big Stoppard fans. I agreed
with the critics that the music was not very memorable and
Michael Crawford perhaps didn't need quite so much padding
making him unrecognisable. But we loved Trevor Nunn's
production. I remember a quote decades ago which said
that if you come out of a musical whistling the sets then
the show is in deep trouble, but the sets here are by
William Dudley whose work we applauded in Stoppard's
Coast of Utopia at the National and the Royal Court's
Hitchcock Blonde. Here the set consists of two
moveable arcs of a cylinder on which computer produced
images of rooms, a church interior, a country house and its
estate are projected dynamically with a 3D effect as they
move. The wedding scene in which the altar and
congregation turn swiftly on the stage revolve while the
background turns synchronously, was truly cinematic. Several
people have complained of motion sickness, but we loved it.
I saw Michael Crawford twice on stage in the seventies.
He played Billy in the musical adaptation of Billy Liar,
but earlier he appeared at the Wimbledon Theatre in a
pre-West End tryout of No Sex Please, We're British.
I was already a fan after seeing him on TV in the sixties,
but I can still see him literally running up the wall in
that show. A true showman! Strangely (or not) that
show doesn't appear currently on his list of past
productions. In this show he plays a big character in
every sense, but he is good actor enough to leave doubt as
to the character's sincerity. You must make up your own mind
about his Count Fosco. A privilege to see a star doing
his stuff without overwhelming the other players. Of
course no one could take their eyes off the white rat
running up and down his arm during his big number!
Maria Friedman is the star of the show and she is very
good indeed. Martin Crewes was very good as the young
male lead, and it was great to see Edward Petherbridge who
starred in the first London production of Stoppard's
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He is
always a joy.
What other recommendation can I give than to say we had a
great night out, even though I can't sing anything but the
set! |
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Listening
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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 great performer.
When I listen to music I mostly listen to classical: Mahler,
Richard Strauss, Wagner, Ravel, Mozart, especially his operas and Requiem, and
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 walking or bussing to and from work, 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
on the best talk
radio in the world.
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Updated 16th September
2007
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