User Profile

I was born in Southeast England, in 1968, and mostly brought up in a town full of retired colonels. My early memories largely consist of running around building sites and being able to spell 'colonel' at an unusually early age. Like most people of that sort of age, I took to making up imaginary friends to supplement his real ones. Unlike most people, I haven't stopped, and I've been writing about them in one form or another ever since.

Aside from writing books and pretending to be other people (which largely amount to the the same thing), I have, at various times, been obsessed with classical piano music, kung-fu, particle physics and Civilisation. I also had an unhealthy interest in explosives, specifically rockets. This is genetic and thus Not My Fault. Anything involving the bomb squad was definitely both Not My Fault and Someone Else.

I now live in a different part of Southeast England with my wife, two children and two cats. Much of life (aside from the headline highlights, such as meeting wife-to-be, birth of first son, etc.) has been lost to the mists of time and the haze of the Small Child Effect. However, I offer the following formative experiences, in roughly chronological order, that have little to do with the people close to me, either the real ones or the imaginary ones:

My first solo trip abroad. As soon as I wasn't looking, the Falklands was broke out. Ever since, whenever I return from a holiday abroad, it is with a huge sigh of relief that I discover that no new wars have broken out [1].

Discovering it is possible to warp time and thus fit in studying and 27 hours of social engagements each day. This is an ability that seems to decline with age.

Discovering, at much the same time, that coffee is an alternative to sleep (although sadly that doesn't work any more either).

Being offered the prospect of being paid to do fantastic and exciting mathematics at a careers fair by two attractive young ladies.

Realising, years later, just how pathetically easily that had worked.

Discovering word-processors.

Being suddenly eye to eye with a shoal of barracuda (I swear, they *teleport en masse* in the water).

The Li river and running around in the Stone Forest near Kunming at night under the light of a full moon.

Being told that playing Josef Stalin's moustache as a character in a super-heros game is 'too silly'

Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring

[1] Usually.

Friends (18):

Mutual Friends (18):

Also Friend of (8):