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Born on January 8^th 1956, I like music, laughing, running and drinking good red wine and real ale. On the occasions when I run with the Hash House Harriers, all of these can be accomplished simultaneously! Thanks to the late Vax Headroom (Martin Minow) for inculcating me in the mysteries of Hashing.

I was always far too fat to be a good runner, but I am very proud that Wendy is, having represented Wales as an International Cross-Country competitor. Our kids are the light and bane of our lives… as you'd expect! I am however a keen photographer and you can find piccies of Sandhurst Joggers at all kinds of events on my photography page.

Wendy remains a member of Sandhurst Joggers having stepped down from the Committee permanently on 26^th March 2007.

We have three kids, Pippa, Simon and Dan, of whom more, later.

We like music of all kinds - R.E.M. and Peter Gabriel are favourites, as well as Fairport Convention, Prokofiev and Philip Glass.

I read a lot - Science Fiction mostly - but also like thrillers and Penguin's '….For Beginners' series. My favourite authors include Kinky Friedman, William Gibson, Gregory MacDonald and Enid Blyton. I am an avid comic collector and have many moons of Batman stashed away.

The whole family is into Star Trek in a big way - didn't like DS9 all that much though. The X-Files was a family addiction too, but despite this we have yet to mutate or be abducted by aliens.

Which fits in rather nicely with the fact that Quantum Physics is a fascination of mine and I read up all that I can.

I had a vasectomy in 1988 and felt the need to write about the experience. Should you want to take a look, the write-up is here (no piccies!).

We vacation in interesting places - Hungary was a highlight in 1996, as was the hurricane-ridden Dominican Republic in 1998. Egypt was great (but hot!) in 2002.

From 1983 I worked at DEC's UK Support Centre in Basingstoke firstly supporting the RAINBOW and DEC Professional systems, then moved to uVAXen and VMS. From there I moved to a job that took me from Reading (UK) to Valbonne (France), Paris, Munich, Milan, Nashua, New Hampshire, Colorado Springs and Atlanta, before ending up in Newbury (UK). There I worked with the newly formed UK branch of VMS Engineering as their Customer Services Systems Engineer, responsible for training up the field for new functionality. They moved to Edinburgh, I didn't and so I left DEC in November 1992. It was a terrible break with the Digital “family”, but I was hardly alone – thousands were leaving at that point. I can’t say I regretted leaving though; it was a good thing to leave a dying company.

After 3 months having a good time with the redundancy money, I started contracting at BZW thence working at British Gas, DEC (again), Channel 4 Television, Reuters and doing Y2K at Credit Suisse from May 1998 until Jan 2000

I joined NTL in March 2000 and eventually became a permie there in August 2000. They then outsourced me to IBM on 24 May 2001, where I remained until 5 July 2002 when I returned to NTL, sticking around until June 2004 when I took redundancy rather than be killed off by a thousand cuts.

Pictures of the family from April 2003 can be found here. Lots of other pictures can be found here

Wendy returned to full-time education and graduated in 2001 from Reading University with a degree in English. She is now working in the NHS.

Pippa graduated in 2003 with a degree in Medical Physics at Swansea University and successfully served a year as Treasurer for the Student Union. She now works in Cardiff.

Simon graduated in July 2007 and we all had a great time – see these pictures. He has yet to decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life – a problem I share.

Daniel has quit college, gotten a job and seems much happier for it

In April 2004 my Dad (Keith Leslie) died, which had a profound impact upon me, as I was there with him from initial diagnosis to his death – every appointment, every Doctor, right up to the end. For more about my Dad and my Mum (Alice), who died Easter Sunday, 2007, see here and my blog.

At the end of July 2004 I left ntl. Wendy is working at the Finchampstead Surgery.

I participate in several forums, notably the TalkAWhile forum, centred around folk music and in particular that of Fairport Convention.

As I write this I’m 51 years old, a mark I never thought I’d reach. Ho hum. “Consider the alternative”, as my Dad used to say…

Last updated 11 December 2008