Born in Stockport, Cheshire on 7 December 1951. Lived there (apart from working summers in Cornwall, from '69 to '71) till 1972 when I went to Bradford Art College and lived in Leeds/Bradford for a couple of years. Then back to various parts of South Manchester (apart from a few months in Amsterdam in 1976) until New Year 1980 when I moved to Middlesbrough (it seemed like a good idea at the time ...!) Actually, had a good time there, despite it being Britain's biggest blot on the landscape ... seven miles of British Steel, twelve miles of ICI (or is it the other way round?). From there to Sheffield in January 1982 to do a degree in Silversmithing & Jewellery, and been here ever since.
Interests include roots/blues/other music; playing concertina; step dancing (traditional clog, Appalachian, Irish sets); reading; writing; haiku; cyberspace; design ... but most of my time these days seems to be spent sitting glassy-eyed for hours on end in front of one computer or another.
BA (Hons) Silversmithing and Jewellery (Sheffield City Polytechnic 1985)
MA Writing (chief study Literary Editing) (Distinction) (Sheffield Hallam University 1996)
All sorts of things over the years, from managing a record shop called Purple Haze (that dates it nicely!) to being a textile tracer, layout artist, library assistant, designer jeweller, pyrographer and perennial student. From 1988 - 1995 worked as a graphic designer at Sheffield Hallam University before moving into multimedia/web design for six years at the university's Centre for Multimedia in Education. Since early 2001, working for Smooth Operations, an independent radio production company making music programmes mainly for BBC Radio 2, as web editor for the BBC Folk and Acoustic website. Currently taking a 6-month career break until January 2007.
