I’m a Scottish fifty-something guy. I live in Hackney in London, UK, with my partner and — sometimes — our two grown-up youngsters.

I’m a writer and a software developer. (Somewhere along the line I switched to saying that, rather than “programmer”, but it’s the same thing.)

Writing

OK, maybe there should be an “aspiring” in there, but how long can you actually aspire for? I’ve completed a couple of novels, though both of them could use some serious rewriting, especially the later one. And I’ve nothing published, except one poem in a long-defunct magazine.

Well, unless we count some technical writing, such as this exciting piece from a recent job.

And now (late 2019/early 2020) I am considering journalism…

Software Development

A long time ago I discovered that people would pay me for something I loved doing. It wasn’t music, or writing, but at least it was an indoor job with no heavy lifting, as an old friend used to say.

Mainly Java, some Python, JavaScript. There’s more about all that around here somewhere.

Music

Not quite such a long time ago I used sing and play guitar in Burn, a cowpunk band. We kind of wound up a decade or so back. Though never formally. We “broke up through musical indifference”, as our drummer Tony puts it.

These days I haven’t picked up my guitar in years. Still love music, obviously.