I am 58 years old, married and retired. A qualified electrical engineer, I spent most of my working career in industrial engineering and general mangement roles. Since retirement, I divide my time between being a volunteer at the local hospital and spending time on my long time hobbies of photography and ceramics collecting
1954-1959 ----- Tauntons School, Southampton
7 O-Levels, Chipperfield Scholars prize
1959-1965 ----- Southampton College of Technology
HNC Electrical Engineering
1959 - 1972 ---- Pirelli Cables
Following a 5 year Student Apprenticeship, I spent 8 years in various industrial engineering roles, primarily Time and motion study and methods engineering
1972 - 1978 ----- Dimplex Heating Limited
Following an initial period spent designing and implementing a payments by results system, I moved into Production Engineering, planning factory layouts and manufacturing systems. designing and purchasing plant and equipment. This was followed by a period setting up and running the quality control function
1978 -1990 ----------- Ferguson Television Ltd
In my 12 years with Ferguson, I had a number of roles :-
Cost Control Manager
Work Study Manager
Site Engineering Manager
Site Director
Ferguson was situated in Gosport and employed around 2000 people. Products included television and satellite receivers. About 1 million televisions per year were produced and site turnover was about £200 million per annum. Fergusonwas part of the Thomson Group, a French company with world wide interests, occupying the number 2 slot in the global consumer electronics market
Illness brought my working career to a halt in 1990
1996-2002 ------- Volunteering at the Southampton General Hospital
I work two days a week in the Re-Habilitation Workshop. The function of this workshop is to help patients with physical and neurlogical problems following head injury or stroke. Through project based activity usually involving woodwork or computer based activities, patients are helped to rehabilitate their planning and reasoning skills, their physical and mental stamina, their social skills and re-establish an often damaged esteem. It sounds awfully worthy and solemn but in truth its usually great fun.
Photography
Colour and monochrome photography and darkroom work gradually expanded over the years to providing photographs and illustrated articles to magazines andnewspapers on a semi-professional basis (no weddings!) In recent years my interests have changed and I have become more interested in the history of cameras and frequently attend camera collectors fairs