Personal Information

Until the 4th May 2003, I was a computer programmer working for a well-known company in Reading (Yell Ltd, formerly BT's Yellow Pages). I'd worked in IT since I graduated in 1979 with an honours Computer Science Degree from Wolverhampton Polytechnic. I used mainly PL/SQL, SQL+ and VAX Basic, but have used PowerBuilder. The last thing I got involved with was a rather quirky system running on an HP running UniVerse (under Unix) and written mainly in UniVerse Basic. I moved down here from the Midlands in November 1996 when my old department was merged into Yellow Pages after they bought out ITT World Directories (UK), the company I joined in 1987. It's a move I regretted as six months later I split up with my partner and six months after that my Mum died (23rd December 1997). I then spent some time as a humble bus driver, having taken my PCV licence in September 2003. I achieved qualification to NVQ level 2. I am currently retired.

I was born in the City of Wolverhampton in the mid 1950s in a small nursing home in Riley Crescent, Penn Fields. This is within the boundary of the 9 hides of land granted to Lady Wulfrun back in 984, thus I am a Wulfrunian.
School was Springdale County Infants School, then Springdale County Primary School and then finally St Chad's College (a grammar school). I spent a year at Wulfrun College of Further Education in Paget Road and then went to London University (Queen Elizabeth College) where I read biochemistry. At the end of my first year, I discovered computers and that changed my direction of study. I left after the first year and went to The Polytechnic, Wolverhampton, where I read Computer Science and got a lower second honours degree.

I used to have a BMW K100RS motorcycle, which I had to send for scrap on the 19th June 2003. I'd had bikes since 1975 - I passed my test in 1976. I used to be an instructor (and later on an examiner) for the RAC/ACU Training Scheme and Proficiency Certificate.

I'm currently single (but open to offers as it's not by choice and it's rather a long story, plus I hate living alone).
The full "long story" can be read by clicking on the words highlighted in orange above.

I am interested in photography, the theatre, transport, cinema, motorcycling and reading. I also hold a Radio Amateur licence (for which I had to take a City & Guilds exam and a Morse Code test) and for anybody interested my callsign is G4ORX (it still is if you're not interested), however I haven't been active in the hobby for quite some time. I also like going to museums, especially the "living" museums, my favourite is the Black Country museum - I have connections with two exhibits. The canal bridge (when it was in Wolverhampton) was where I had my first car accident and I helped restore one of the vehicles, a Wolverhampton Trolleybus, when I was at school (St Chad's College 1966-1973). My main contribution to its restoration was to remove the nicotine stains from the upper deck ceiling. I re-joined the Transport Group at the Black Country Museum (it used to be the Wolverhampton Trolleybus Group 30 years before when I was first involved) in early 2000 and started to work as a conductor on the occasional Sunday. Once I'd worked at the museum as a volunteer on quite a few weekends (I go about once a month and usually the bank holidays as well), I finally got to drive it. It was worth the 30 year wait and then in summer 2002, I passed the museum's test and was able to drive visitors round the site. I also qualified to drive the tram there. After a brief period when operations had to be suspended due to theft of parts of the overhead I received a letter to tell me I'd be contacted when operation resumed. That was the last I ever heard.

Me in June 2002, driving my favourite trolleybus


<--- Click here for my Trolleybus Site.