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.

In the autumn of 2020, I’m doing something I should have done twenty, thirty, or more years ago: I’m taking a masters in creative writing.

It doesn’t guarantee anything at the end, of course, and maybe I’ll go back to programming. But as steps forward go, it feels like a decisive one.

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.

Linking that to writing, I have done a fair amount of technical writing. For example this exciting piece from a recent job.

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.