The Geek's Progress - Part One

Well, hello again. Inspiration runs rather too short today and so I thought that I'd follow other blogs I've read and posting a little about myself in case there is anyone still reading this.

It never really occured to me to post anything about myself before - largely because I'm not much of a "me, me, me" kind of person and this blog was meant to be about the writings rather than the writer. Think of these biographical posts as the "about the author" notes at the back of the book.

I'm mostly male, somewhere between 6'1" and 6' 2" tall and 33 years of age (if you don't believe me, cut me in half and count the rings). Currently, a lot of my time is spent wondering what happened to my 20s.

I grew up in West Oxfordshire - which is rural and very beautiful in an Inspector Morse-ey kind of way but suffers from the usual tensions between it's established rural roots and it's new nouveau riche population.

Witney, my home town, was once centre of a now-vanished blanket industry. It's very pretty but it's Douglas Hurd's old constituency (and now David Cameron's base of operations) which makes it probably the safest Tory seat in Britain. This should give you a clue as to how dangerous, edgy and exciting it was to grow up there - particularly when, as in my case, your father is a well known local policeman. Some people are born square, others become squares while others have squareness thrust upon them.

I was educated at Henry Box school in Witney. Henry Box was a 17th century grocer who, my sister proudly pointed out in the Witney Gazette, has recently made it into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Just imagine the otherworldly chagrin of all those other 17th century grocers who missed the grade this time around!

My school was a comprehensive with some grammar school pretensions/hangovers. I had pretty uneventful school days and I was lucky in that I was classed as not being bright enough to be "someone to watch" (i.e. Oxford or Cambridge Material) but not dumb enough to be "someone to ignore". Wielding dandruff , a lack of sporting ability and a full range of teenage personal hygiene issues as a form of protective camouflage I was never popular - but courting popularity is not something I've ever approved of.

Art was traditionally my strongest subject and in I always intended to become an artist but after disastrous GCSE Art results (damn my lack of preparatory sketches) I realised that I wasn't going to make it in the art world. I therefore decided that I would study History of Art at University instead.

At the time I told myself my choice of course was down to a desire to broaden my mind, learn a little about our visual culture and bring art to the masses (my mother had imbued me with a gentle form of socialism). As I look back now I realise that it was at least partially because such courses are traditionally full of women.

More soon (whether you like it or not).