I was born in Worcester, and spent most of my early life in Stourport-on-Severn – a Georgian canal town and haven for summertime touring Midlanders looking for chips and crazy golf. Skipping ahead, I read for a degree in English, History and Education from the University in Birmingham, at a subsidiary institution which, like all the very best academic institutions, has long since been expunged from the face of the earth and is now the set for a BBC daytime soap. It was at University that I met Sandra and, after living for a year with her in a dingy, haunted, damp-ridden Stourport flat, we eventually upped sticks and moved to Derbyshire. That marked my final departure from the midlands.

 

We married in 2004 and honeymooned in New York, a place which is never far from my thoughts (or my mouth - although people who know me have grown wise and daren’t bring it up). You really don’t get New York until you’ve been there and experienced if for yourself. In that sense, it’s a bit like Stourport. Except that where New York is a bustling, vibrant, powerfully overwhelming city full of spectacle and promise, Stourport has canal basins, and the chips and crazy golf I mentioned earlier. In March the next year, we had a son, Sam, and so we – that’s the wife, the boy and me – reside in a little town in Devon.

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I've worked in education for 10 years, and moonlighted as a freelance education writer for 16 years. I've written for various magazines such as Baby & Child, Nursery World, Teach Early Years, and Teach Primary, and now work as a Year 7 teacher and English lead in a special school in the South West.