Me

It's all about me!


Once upon a time I was born in a military hospital near RAF Laarbruch in (the then) West Germany. My Dad was in the RAF and we travelled around a fair amount, variously ending up in Cramond, Edinburgh; RAF Honington, Suffolk; RAF Bruggen, Germany and RAF Finningley, Yorkshire.

Once my Dad retired from the RAF, we finally landed up in North Lancashire in a village called Forton, which used to be famous for Forton Services on the M6. It had a crazy looking concrete mushroom observation tower on one side which is now closed. I went to a couple of schools up there, one was Kirkham Grammar School and Lancaster Royal Grammar School, where I did my GCSEs and A-levels.

I didn't really like Kirkham very much; its main emphasis was on sport, which I wasn't really into at the time, and it did seem to shy away from Science and Engineering. Lancaster was great, I particularly liked the Design & Technology side of things (I really will never forget Mr. Gibson - and outstanding teacher and a total inspiration). I also did pretty well on the rowing front (if you look carefully through the site, you'll even find a picture of me). My two best friends there were Simon Pearson and Sam Worthington - we seem to have totally lost touch since then - maybe they'll stumble across this one day and get back in contact.

After school, I went to Imperial College (a University in London) to study for an MEng in Aeronautical Engineering. This involved a move down to London - I spent a first, not entirely happy, year in Halls in South Kensington.

I think that just before I moved to London, I realised I was gay (perhaps it was an episode of Queer as Folk that finally convinced me), but the freedom that came with University allowed me to do something about it. On February 14th 1999 I met my husband-to-be, Steve, over eight years later we're still going strong. We got married in March 2007 and currently live in London's Docklands with our pet snake Cornelia.

After graduating I did a spell at an Internet Service Provider (ISP), Mailbox Internet, for about 18 months. It wasn't the greatest job in the world, so I left to do a spell in IT Support back at Imperial - after about 6 months I went for, and got, a great promotion in the Windows Infrastructure R&D team.

I used to climb a lot but don't get the time so much these days, although at Imperial's new sports centre they have a pretty good wall, so I'm trying to do more.

My main hobby at the moment I suppose is photography (as well as all this webby stuff). I've just bought a Nikon D50 DSLR to replace my old Fuji S602 and it's an absolutely stunning camera. My main thing is in landscape work (which I like to think I'm fairly good at) as well as the odd botanically inspired items.