George (and Family) at Hanslope Lamalou
This is a page about me, and my family. You can find out more about us and the village we used to live in by following the links.
Early Years
I was born at a very early age in Ely, Cambridgeshire and was brought up in London and, from the age of six, Derbyshire. I still consider myself to be a "Derbyshire lad". I went to Sheffield University to study Electronic Engineering. Sadly, the course was not what I had been expecting and I failed my first year exams. In a fit of despair, I applied for a job as a Trainee Programmer with a civil engineering company.
Twenties
The first computer I worked on was an ICT 1901. It had 4K words of memory (yes 4K!) and no magnetic media - everything was on punched cards. I became adept with a manual 12 key card punch and at putting the "chads" back in the holes when I made a mistake! After a couple of years in this job I began to look around for something a little larger. I accepted a post at British Aircraft Corporation in Surrey as a Programmer responsible for conversion of COBOL and Assembler programs for decimalization day. I shared a house with four other mad, single blokes in Woking. Great parties, loud music, home made beer, you know the sort of thing.
Work was boring so I applied for a job with a software house in London. Got it, and within 3 months was working on a project for UNESCO in Paris! Interesting and complex Assembler programming, still on ICL mainframes. Despite being offered a permanent job in Paris - I still can't quite believe I turned it down - I remained at Software Sciences for over two years. During this time I met my wife to be, Lyn.
Married Life
Lyn was a teacher at a private school in Surrey and she applied for a change of job. The new job was in Newport Pagnell - about 70 miles from Woking. I was becoming less happy in my work and decided to look for something in the same area. The Open University in Milton Keynes was my next employer. A great place to work! Several bars, sports facilities (little used by me - except for croquet and darts), and terrific company. The OU eventually replaced their ICL mainframes with a Univac 1106. I was now working as a Systems Programmer and was involved in interesting on-line control software work.
Over the six years that I worked at the OU the family grew. We had two children, Lindsay and Robert, and our own little house in Stony Stratford. After a while it seemed to be time to move on again and I applied for a post as Senior Programmer at TSB in Altrincham, Cheshire. This turned out to be a pretty bad move. I didn't really enjoy working there although I was pleased to be back near my roots in Derbyshire. The Peak District National Park was less than 5 miles from our new home in Macclesfield. Next move was back to Milton Keynes. We lived in a village called Hanslope (that has a church with a beautiful spire, as you can see) and I was working for Abbey National. I now had some experience of communications software and found that at Abbey National I was allowed to put some of my skills to use at last. (You can find more about Hanslope by following the "Hanslope" link at the top of the page.)
Working life
I worked for Abbey National for over eighteen years. I was Senior Systems Programmer working in Assembler on the Unisys mainframes and more recently did Systems Consultancy jobs with a fair amount of VB programming and Intranet work including Active Server Pages and VBscript. The children are grown - Lindsay has a son, Thomas, and a daughter, Esther, (born on 31st March 1999) so I'm a Granddad twice over! While bringing up her family, Lindsay has found time to study for, and gain, a degree in French and has qualified as a teacher. She took a year out to travel round the world with her family. You can follow their travels on their own web site. Robert took a degree in Philosophy at Southampton University and went on to do his Masters at York University. Since gaining his masters, he has spent 6 months at the Göethe Institute in Bonn, Germany, learning the German language. He then spent five months travelling the world to catch up with friends from other countrues. He visited the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. He is now back at Southampton studying for his PhD. Apart from studying, Robert enjoys photogrpahy, music and art. (You can find more about the family by following the "The Family" link at the top of the page.)
Two of our three dogs, Lucky and Bramble, died in 1997. Our remaining one, Merry, had to be put to sleep after a short illness while we were on holiday in August 1998. She was nearly 15 years old and had been fit and active. We will miss her. She walked the Ridgeway with us in summer 1997, 90 miles along the oldest regular "road" in the country. We undertook the walk with two friends from work - so it was a case of "Five Walk the Ridgeway" - lashings of (ginger) beer! We now have another dog, Defa Diogenes, a yellow Labrador Retriever (crossed with a pony!) He is 4 years old, and not quite as easy to train as the Border Collies but is a wonderful pet and great company when out walking. (You can find more about the dogs we have owned by following the "The Dogs" link at the top of the page.)
Retirement and Hobbies
In October 2003 we upped sticks and moved to the South of France! We now live in a lovely villa with a gorgeous view in Lamalou-les-Bains, a town in the Haut Languedoc Natural Park. We are now quite settled in here but the language is still a problem for me at times. A page about our French experiences is currently under construction.
I have a particular interest in Odonata (Dragonflies and Damselflies). I am a member of the British Dragonfly Society and am webmaster of the Official BDS site».
I have been interested in photography for many years and have a particular interest in macro photography of insects. You can find more about this hobby with some galleries of my photos by visiting the Photography section of this site.) I like playing computer role-playing games (e.g. Ultima Underworld I and II, Elder Scrolls Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Thief, Dungeon Keeper, Baldur's Gate, Dungeon Siege etc.). Some years ago some friends from the OU and I wrote a sort of CRPG for the Sinclair Spectrum called Out Of The Shadows which was a minor success in the UK (but not enough to make us a fortune). I like rock music, particularly Pink Floyd», and enjoy reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld» books. I enjoy walking, particularly on the hills. When I was a much younger chap, I walked the Pennine Way, a long distance footpath which takes you 250 miles from Derbyshire to the Scottish border. Since moving to France I have taken up walking quite seriously again. A friend, Mostyn Hart, suggested that we walk the GR10, the long-distance footpath from the Atlantic to the Meditteranean along the line of the Pyrenees. We started that adventure in September 2006. We are keeping a diary of our progress.
I hope this hasn't proved too boring. If you got this far, Congratulations! As new things happen I'll keep this up to date.