A long time ago in a galaxy far far away….
Born in London in August 1972 I have mostly always been interested in ‘how things work’. From a very early age I would take things apart like clocks and watches (old-ish ones of course). I was fascinated by the workings of wind-up and electronic time-pieces and gradually worked my way through other electronic gadgets. I became quite good at understanding how and why something did what it did, and when it didn’t do what it was supposed to, I would know how to fix it.
At senior school I started to get into computing (BBC Micro/Master System) and liked science; especially chemistry, physics and maths. By this time my family (and their friends) knew me as the ‘fixer’ and I would be called on to install a new TV/VCR or fix a problem, mostly with video recorders and hi-fi’s.
Naturally when I reached college I decided to take an Electronic Engineering course and followed this through to Kingston University where I also studdied Systems Engineering and Computing.
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go.
When I left Uni I had a small stint working for British Aerospace as a Radar Control Engineer. Then the 1st recession hit and I couldn’t find another engineering job so I went and worked with a small firm of Financial Advisors as a junior administrator (non-technical).
Fast-forward about 3 years and I started working for an IT Consultancy firm in London as a 1st Line IT Support Engineer. Straight away I was plunged into helping a team of 17 engineers support around 800 traders in Canary Wharf. It was a really high-octane atmosphere and was a great place to start my career in IT.
Over the next few years working for the same firm, I was based at various financial institutions around London and was having a great time working hard and having a great social life.
Wife & Kids
I decided in 1999 to go on a holiday to Spain with some friends of friends where I met my wife, Zoe (she was one of the friends of a friend). We hit it off instantly and had a great ‘Holiday Romance’.
On arriving back to the UK we decided to still date and all was going great, so we married in Sept 2001.
One year later and the firm I was working for was bought by Thales. I was starting to get a little tired of commuting to London and so I managed to secure a position with the new firm’s offices in Surrey, just in time for my first child’s arrival.
Harrison was born on 14/09/2002 and as we were all getting to big for our appartment in Surbiton we decided to move to a house in Walton-on-Thames.
A couple of years later and again on a September day, our second child came into the world.
Jorja was born on 28/09/2005 and completed my family. (No, we’re not going to have any more kids. Two’s enough!)