about the authoR
electronic engineer and accidental entrepreneur turns to writing
I was born in Bristol in the fifties and grew up in a between-the-wars semi in what was then a genteel suburb. I was part of the first cohort to go to comprehensive school, in my case a Church of England endowed school in the centre of the city, and although the school was five hundred years old, I was probably its first scholar to go to university.
When I got there, I realised what opportunities I had been gifted, but also what poor credentials I was starting with. I knew nothing. But I embraced university life and although it was overwhelmingly a technical establishment in a small midlands town, I was seduced by my broadening horizons and the tantalising prospects they were mining.
My subject was Electronic Engineering. It was flavour of the month in the 70’s and came with an abundance of career job offers at the end of three years. But after an unrewarding experiment with industry, I returned to the university for a further four, researching into the mysteries of digital signal processing and pattern recognition for a higher degree.
It was a tumultous time
A comfortable academic career beckoned, but on a whim a colleague and I spun out a fledgling technology company focussed on our research. It was a wily move. Our timing was flawless; the telecommunications industry was becoming a very sexy place to be. We targeted a specialist niche of the market and quickly became global players, helped from the start by some extraordinarily talented individuals. We were feeling our way but the industry was humming and we rode on the back of it for ten years. It was a tumultuous time. Batshit crazy. We grew effortlessly to a hundred and sixty staff without any external investment, but storm clouds were gathering and the markets were evolving. There was change in the air. My business partner and I passed on the mantle to our young, ambitious executives who were champing at the bit with new ideas and we managed a hurried but orderly exit just before the dot-com bubble finally burst at the turn of the century.
I bought some land and planted trees. Lots of trees
I unexpectedly found myself curiously fulfilled, with three young children at the village school and suddenly with time to embrace family life at this most enchanting juncture. I was in no hurry to return to the frenzy, being after all something of an accidental entrepreneur. I was rather enjoying myself. I bought some land and planted trees. Lots of trees. They’re just down the road and the ones that weren’t ash are now big enough to look like proper trees. That’s nice. And we bought an ancient farmhouse that needed a little work to bring it back to life. It was my project for a while, and when it was finished and the outbuildings had been converted and the children had left school, my wife and I ‘retired’ to North Devon and we live here in the middle of the countryside looking out over Exmoor and nothing much else.
It felt like returning home to my roots. Apart from a rogue pit-sinking coalminer from South Wales who swept my great-grandmother off her feet, all my family are from the West Country, migrating from Wiltshire and Devon to the North Somerset coalfields before the Great War.
‘Coat with Long Sleeves’ is the result
It feels right, here. It’s where I want to be. I spend my time reading and gardening and walking and now I also indulge myself with creative writing. What a delight to be able to subsume all my interests into a story that’s been niggling away in a dark corner of my brain for years. And ‘Coat with Long Sleeves’ is the result. It’s got dark moments, but it also has English folklore; green men; nature; the retreat of nature; trees and woodland; ancient vernacular buildings; country churches and pubs.
The only interest of mine that doesn’t have a part is Artificial Intelligence, but that’s going to be in the second book, so you’ll have to wait a bit longer for that, I’m afraid.
