This section is really to cover my working life and documents the journey I have taken since leaving teacher training college.

I spent three years at Chorley College of Education where I qualified as a teacher.  My main subject was Physical Education and my second subject was Mathematics.  This was a perfect combination for me as I was clearly good at gymnastics and had an ability and interest in most other sports, but I also had a general comfort with maths and found its logic suited the way I think.

I was very fortunate in gaining my first job as a teacher (although I always maintain that you make your own good fortune) in that I was contacted by the school on the day that I completed my final examinations and asked if I would be interested in applying for a job which was coming up as a maths teacher.

I had completed my second (of three) teaching practices at this school , which was only a mile away from where I lived, the previous year and I really enjoyed my three weeks there.  I must have done something right during those three weeks as they had obviously remembered me and were kind enough to make contact with me through the college and consider me for the up coming position.

Although I had an initial reservation, as maths was my second subject and I really wanted to teach PE. the more I thought about it, it seemed perfect.  I could teach an academic subject which I enjoyed but do those elements of PE which really attracted me.  This meant that I wouldn't have to get involved in running football teams on a Saturday morning, which really didn't appeal to me, but I could do all the gymnastics, athletics and other elements of PE which I really enjoyed.  So I was offered the job (from a short list of one !!) which I gladly accepted.

It really did turn out to be a good move.  I was close to my home and teaching at a very good school where the students were very well behaved and there was a really happy atmosphere.

It really was the start of my journey down the "professional young man on his way" road.  I was 21, had a responsible job at a well respected school, I'd just bought my first house and within a year I would be married.

After a couple of years the school wanted to introduce computing as a new subject.  This was 1979/80 and just at the start of the PC revolution.  So I was invited to set up this department and as a result of this enrolled on a 2 year part time degree course at Lancaster University's campus in Preston.  This both qualified me to teach the subject and introduced me to a subject which was to have a long standing impact on my working life for some time to come.

In short I introduced the first computing option into the school curriculum and two years later when the first group completed their examinations it was deemed a success.

Before too long however I was starting to become a little disillusioned with both teaching as a profession and marriage as an institution.

I realised that no matter how successful I was as a teacher, I was never going to be financially well off, but even worse I began to resent the fact that my privacy and life was not my own when not at work.  As a teacher of 11 - 16 year olds you were almost a third gender who was not allowed the anonymity of every other working adult.  If some pupil saw you out at the weekend it was almost as if you'd been 'let out' for a while and discovered to have a normal life by the students who had seen you.  So over a period of a year or two I became very dissatisfied with my lot.

During this period I developed a very close friendship with a girl and it became apparent that I would rather be with her than the girl I married.  So I started to make enquiries about my chances of employment outside of teaching, with computer companies.

I had a very favourable interview with ICL and was subsequently offered a job as a lecturer in their training division, working out of Manchester.

This was just perfect.  I could leave teaching, leave my marriage and start a 'proper job' after seven years of teaching.  It was only when I started working at ICL that I began to appreciate what the real world of business and commerce was all about.  I really enjoyed it and reasonably quickly became a competent lecturer for the company and began to travel extensively, delivering courses in Singapore, Hungary, Australia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi amongst other places.

I thought I was giving up 13 weeks holiday a year as a teacher.  I had no idea that I was opening up such opportunities to travel and enjoy the world of corporate life, in what were very good times for that industry.  I would develop and deliver training courses on new products and systems as they were produced by ICL, and even did a little pre-release development in order that courses would be available on the launch of a product.

I would also develop my team of lecturers to deliver these events and travel quite extensively as a result of this work, rolling out these courses worldwide.

After about 3 years I moved into the world of sales and consultancy.  I remained in the same office and working with the same people, but instead of delivering courses I was selling them to our customers.

This seemed a natural extension to what I was doing.  My interpersonal skills were quite good and as a lecturer I would often be taken out with sales consultants to help close a deal.  So moving into that arena was quite a natural progression as well as an opportunity to earn quite a lot more money and enjoy the benefits associated with such a role.

Around this time my relationship with my girlfriend was reaching an end so I moved to Manchester and bought an apartment in a new development which had been built on the site of the old docks.  This proved a very good move as my social life had moved from the coast to Manchester and it was beginning to get a little tiring commuting to Manchester each day, especially if I'd been out after work.

 Of course the biggest impact of me changing my role in ICL was that I met Marie, but that's all been covered elsewhere in this website.

Well I didn't do badly at the selling thing, but equally I was never the top achiever over the three years which I was in that role.  However towards the end of 1991, just before you were born, there was a need to reduce the headcount in the sales department and I was 'made an offer' to consider my position within ICL in exchange for a sizeable sum of money.

I figured that I would take my chance in the open market, took the money and ran to the bank with it as fast as I could !!

So I had a short period of 'rest' and after a couple of months was offered a job selling training packages for a company which was based only a couple of miles away from ICL's training headquarters in Old Windsor.  In fact I couldn't believe my fortune when the company offering me this job had it's headquarters in the building next to the office where Marie's first husband worked.  I can't tell you how desperate I was to get this job, not for the opportunity to work for them, but for the opportunity to be close to Marie.

Clearly this was not the best reason for accepting a job, and true to form it only lasted for about a year before I left.  In honesty I just used them as a means to be close to Marie and subsequently yourself, and they were kind enough to pay me money for the privilege.

After that I had a period of a few months where I didn't work but then I was offered some work by my old colleagues at ICL as a freelance lecturer.  This meant that I would earn a very good daily wage, but I might not work every day of the week.  And indeed this was the case, as I worked for 9 days in a period of three months.  However after that things improved significantly and I started to get lots more work form ICL, and worked most days of the week and therefore started to earn not only very good money, but gained a lot of confidence form people within ICL who started to put lot's more work my way.

Indeed at one point I was working from 9 - 5 on one job and then 6 until midnight and beyond on another project during the same day.

From this I then enjoyed around 5 years of continuous freelance employment on numerous projects for many high profile organisations.  I wrote and delivered a training programme for Mobil/BP petrol stations on their stock control and accounting systems, and managed very high profile training programmes for the deregulation of the UK Gas industry and the introduction of commercial accounting practices in the Ministry of Defence with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

These were not only well paid times, but very happy times as well.  I had moved to London as a result of most of my work now being based there and I had a level of autonomy which gave me the freedom to choose where, when and who I work for.

However from a rounded lifestyle point of view I still hadn't managed to get the balance right.  I strongly believe that balancing equally ones financial, social and emotional needs is the recipe for a contented life.  Furthermore a surplus of one of those needs will not compensate for a deficit in another.  So whilst I was earning a very good amount of money and my social life was OK, my emotional needs were on the floor.

I was very good friends with both Marie and my Spanish ex-girlfriend, but there was no-one else who could come anywhere near satisfying my emotional needs.

So around 1997/8 I joined a friend who was setting up an internet based company.  It was just at the start of the 'Dot Com' revolution and everyone and anyone who had a good idea would suddenly be offered substantial amounts of money to set up internet based enterprises.  Before too long these company's would be worth unbelievable amounts of money, on paper, despite them losing significant amounts.  The truth is that very few people could value such organisations and most of the valuations were based purely on the prospect of what they might earn, should they ever manage to run at a profit.

 Well I had almost three years there, fulfilling a number of roles.  In a nutshell we had a company which set up and ran internet cafe's throughout the UK.  The cafe's themselves didn't make much money from people using them, but what really did make money was the advertising money that we generated from organisations wishing to target the kind of person who used our cafe's.  I had a number of roles during my time there which drew on my experiences in the consultancy, training and sales skills which I had used to date.  Eventually though the 'Dot Com' bubble burst and I left the company just before it went into self destruct mode.

So where did I go ?  Well my best friend, Mike, (whose children I am Godfather to) was now the sales director with ICL's Training Division (who by now had become Fujitsu's training division called Knowledgepool) and he offered me a job back in Old Windsor !  Everything had come full circle almost.

I must say it was a bitter sweet experience to be back.  I really did feel a comfort there and I had maintained my links with Knowledgepool ever since I had left, but these were very different times.

The whole economy had become deflated and things like training, advertising and marketing took quite a hit, as you would expect when things become a little tight financially.

So I can't claim that my time back there was the most productive financially for either Knowledgepool or myself but it was productive and I feel that I contributed actively and opened up and negotiated on the biggest proposition that they have ever had.

Regardless, times were not the best for the training market and I was becoming more and more disillusioned with my working lot.  I really did want to have some fun at work and I was increasingly feeling that I was wasting my time and the company's money by travelling to a dour and increasingly depressing office each morning, only to return to my home some 8 hours later.

At this time (which is actually around the time of writing) I was in the fortunate position of having a fair amount of financial resources at my disposal, following the sale of my house in Maida Vale (the one which you last visited) so I decided that a complete change was required.

I was thinking very seriously about running a restaurant or bar somewhere in the world, and I decided that I should try it out for a while.  A very good friend of mine who had always been in that business was opening a bar/restaurant in Hammersmith, London so we agreed that I should join him and see how it works out.

I would be earning hardly any money at all in comparative terms, but then again I didn't need to.  So now four months into the project, we have been nominated by the London Evening Standard as one of the top ten Pubs in London (praise indeed) and I'm really enjoying it.  So now I'm contemplating my next move.  I'm not sure what it will be exactly, but what I do know is that I can get on with most people for the purposes of the business, I'm reasonably commercially aware and I have a very good mentor and example in my friend.  So perhaps I will be updating this soon with my next move in the hospitality industry.