Married to Sylvia.  1966.  3 children:  6 Grand children: 

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Started as a Mechanic, on both cars and commercial vehicles, went on to drive lorries (Trucks),  I was a Taxi driver in London, A Firefighter in Berkshire, and at Heathrow Airport Fire service. I started a Landscape Gardening business in Ascot/Sunningdale area.  John Major’s recession put paid to that.  Later in the 1990s. We had a one car Taxi Business in Ascot. Sylvia took her turn with the driving,  and did very well.  We had lots of regular customers.

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SYLVIA BECAME ILL

Then out of the blue, in 1998 Sylvia suffered a Spinal Stroke (Spinal Infarction). It paralyzed her from mid chest down.

 

We were actually planning to move to Weymouth, and Sylvia didn't want to carry on living in The Ascot area, where she knew so many people, so the move went ahead, and we came to Weymouth that year.

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That meant I was to have a career change. Bearing in mind I could’t leave Sylvia alone for long periods, so low hours, with high pay was needed. Sounds straight forward enough...Yeh right!

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I took on many training courses, and ended up as an and adult education teacher. See Below

 

COMPUTER COURSES AND ME

Iv'e been contributing to the internet for best part of twenty years. My involvement with computers goes back at least ten more, but I didn't upload anything, because downloading was enough of a nightmare with the "No memory" computers that were affordable at the time.

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Everything was mind numbingly slow. My firstr computer was a 286 with 512kb of memory. The software was windows 3.5, and each window took many seconds to just draw the outline of a box/window, then the data eventually arrived. This was supposed to be the all singing all dancing, time saving, paperless office of the future. They did'nt say how far into the future. Well let me tell you I spent more time, typing in code to auto exe. bat and other files I have long since forgotten.  The truth is; it was only because dos was so infuriatingly difficult to make work, we put up with the emerging windows versions, as they were launched. All hail Windows 95. Yes; ok it made life a bit easier, a little bit, and of course dependant on how much memory you could afford. As for the paperless office, well I heard an American chap say somewhere, a long time ago: "We have got more chance of having a paperless toilet".

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Difference now being is the availability of APPs and templates, to shield us from the dreaded lines of code. 

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I really really wish I had taken notice of  Mac users at the time and gone that route sooner. 

 

In it's infancy I completed so many courses on web design publishing, HTML coding...Etc. It seemed that everyone accept me; already knew about the internet and how to access it, even though it was a new thing. There were experts coming out of the wood work. Some seemed to know what they were doing.

 

Most of them were already established teachers on the main curriculum subjects, so they boned up on this new subject, and dove in.

 

The rest of us just paid up and learnt what was on offer.  It was described as the "Wild West” then, and it really does appear to be exactly that now.

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TEACHING AND ME

I ended up with a whole bunch of certificates.  A Quarter of a Computer Science degree. Various Web design Certs. Plus other misc, related qualifications.  Oh yes, I also qualified as as a chat room moderator, and a post compulsory adult education teaching qualification, level 4.

 

I actually earned money from these qualifications.  I taught;  yes you it guessed computer subjects at the prisons here in Weymouth.  I met lot of very interesting people, from around the world, and a lot of scary people.  I was teaching “Young Offenders” how to design web pages, and gain access to the internet. I dread to think what some of them actually used it for.

 

The old offenders; mostly from Jamaica, were learning more basic stuff. letter writing, use of Sincerely, Faithfully, using the correct tense Etc. although I understood them quite well even when they spoke in Patois.

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Truth to tell, I learnt a great deal my self. Did you know. A Jamaican man will not break wind in front of a group, or individual. he will leave the group, and the room. Then break wind.

 

We could all hear it anyway, but the protocol had been observed, and his integrity was intact. Another memory I have of their speech, although I suspect this is uniquely Caribbean, is the use of the word ask. They would reverse the s and the K, to sound Ask as Aks. 

 

Prison as a working environment was both challenging and educational. The outcome for us was; it paid the bills, so Sylvia I myself could settle into life at the sea side.

 

Truth to tell though, all I ever wanted to do was write songs, and get them played, and maybe, just maybe get them published; yes published. Iv'e said a bit more in

 

AIMS

SONG WRITING AND ME

Collaboration