About Me

History

     For the first twenty five years of my life I lived in Basingstoke, going to Fairfields Infant School in 1976, on to Fairfields Junior School in 1978 and finally to Cranbourne Secondary School in 1982. When I finished school in 1988, I took an apprenticeship at Smiths Industries  Aerospace and Defence Systems Ltd (SIADS) as a Test Technician which lasted for four years during which time I took a day release course out of which I gained an ONC and a HNC in Electronics and Computers. On completing my Apprenticeship I was given an NVQ (Level 3) and offered a job as a Test Technician in the Test and Inspection Department testing and calibrating fuel computers for the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 777 as well as Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) for the BAe 146 and the BAe Hawk. During this time I took a further day release course out of which I obtained an HND in Electronics.

     Changing jobs however meant that I had to move away from Basingstoke otherwise it would have been a sixty mile commute every day. For the first six months I rented a flat in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire which had a wonderful view from the front windows, the Nurse's Quarters of Stoke Mandeville Hospital opposite. This six months gave me a chance to look for a house of my own. I finally found one that I liked in the village of Cheddington, also in Buckinghamshire, just south of Leighton Buzzard.This is a nice and quiet area where the only activity going on is the games of Cat Chess (See rules below) going on outside.

Likes, Dislikes and Idiosyncrasies

   There are only a few types of music I don't like (Modern Jazz being one of them) and my taste in music ranges from Classical to Heavy Metal via most points in between and ranges from artists such as Enya to bands such as Skyclad and Metallica. I don't like Simply Red, The Lighthouse Family or The Verve (The first two show no artistic merit in my opinion, simply rehashing the same songs over and over again and The Verve - stop writing dirges and do a happy song Dammit). Myself, I am musically inept as most of my friends will insist on telling you at great length, not being able to carry a tune, keep a beat or sing in any recognisable key. This may explain the strange looks my brother and I got as we walked along Canterbury High Street one night after coming out of a pub slightly worse for wear. We were singing "The Ballad of Oyster Nan" which goes something like this:

     It carries on like this for another nine verses, most of them which we either forgot or screwed up totally. It had seemed like a good idea at the time and it's all my Aunts fault for giving me a CD of Seventeenth and Eighteenth century bawdy ballads anyway.

     Another thing I enjoy doing is Role-playing, I've been playing RPGs for years being introduced to it by one of my friends in Junior school (Thanks Marc) and nearly got caught playing Dungeons and Dragons in an English lesson in Secondary school which probably wouldn't have been a good idea. Apart from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, I also like playing Toon (Nearly got thrown out of Wargames Club for running a game of this during a meeting - we had got a bit loud) and have been known to play Magic: The Addiction occasionally.

     I'm also very found of Science Fiction and Fantasy and have a large collection of books and videos with my current favourite authors being Robert Jordan, David Eddings and Raymound E. Feist. I must admit to liking Star Trek although I don't think I've quite got to the Trekkie stage yet, I also like Red  Dwarf, the X-Files and Babylon 5 amongst other things. To add to my collection of books and videos, I also have a fairly large collection of Anime and Manga and the whole lot just keeps getting bigger.

     I also like to travel, and until I brought my own house, most of my savings went on that and I've been to Germany and Denmark with the rest of my family, and when I got the money and the courage together to go on holiday abroad alone, I decided on Australia. This was also the first time I had ever flown on anything with an engine and it was a fifteen hour flight to Singapore, with a two hour stop over then a further six hour flight to Perth. I didn't get a wink of sleep during the flight and arrived in Perth at two o'clock in the morning. Out like a light at the Youth Hostel I was staying in. That was a great holiday, from Perth to Cairns overland in the back of a four wheel drive truck, camping out in the Outback and then snorkelling on the Barrier Reef when we got to Cairns. Three weeks going across the Outback with no problems then I go and get sunburnt on the last day. Painful.

     The year after that, three friends and I went to America for four weeks and drove around in a Dodge Caravan seeing the sights from San Diego to San Francisco and Las Vegas. we even came back friends as well, even though there were some close calls. I'll never forgive Andi for getting so pissed one night that he was incoherent the next morning. We poured him into the car and drove off and were two hundred miles further down the road when he said that we had been invited to a Rodeo and Barbeque at midday (This was said a one o'clock in the afternoon). The next year I did a three week trip in China and the year after that, a week climbing active volcanoes in the Aeolian Islands and Sicily. My friends think I'm mad but it's all part of my master plan to try and taste as many types of food and drink from around the world as possible. Hey, I can order beer in six different languages!

     Other things that I like doing include off road cycling on my Mountain Bike, I used to do this on a Racer but got fed up with the punctures. I also like walking and have done the occasional hillwalking holidays which is crazy as I'm absolutely terrified of heights and a couple of the walks have involved walking along Knife-edge Arrettes or climbing up shear rock faces several hundred feet above a huge drop. Doing the same walk again six months later was   even more fun as we had to use Ice Axes to cross an ice sheet above the same drop! I have also tried gliding, paintballing, karting, water-skiing and off road driving through Work social evenings and would quite happily do it all again.

Cat Chess

(The Unadulterated Cat by Terry Pratchett and Gray Jolliffe)