The early years

I was born on Monday 10 January 1966 in Clapham, south London and have spent most of my life living in London, except for the couple of years I lived in Swindon.

For me, London is still my favourite place to live. That goes doubly for England as well. I am proud of being English, even though my family is from Guyana in South America. It would be great if the powers that be also remembered this and stopped trying to dismiss our history, heritage and place in the world as some sort of mistake. Right, that's my rant over, more about me.

My earliest memories were of living at 56 Lillieshall Road in Clapham with my parents, two brothers and three sisters. We didn't have much in those days, but my parents provided for us all and I will always be grateful to them for giving us everything they could plus the values we live by today.

I attended to Clapham Manor primary and junior school, where my skills with a pencil and paintbrush was spotted and encouraged by my teachers. I was particularly good at painting landscapes and buildings and some of my earliest efforts were of a coastlines and hill scenes.

Some of these paintings were entered in competitions and I was able to win some of them, but at the time I wasn't really thinking that it would lead to a career. In fact I remember wanting to be a lawyer [because it sounded good] or a carpenter [like my dad] when I was about 9.

Before my final year at Clapham Manor, we moved to 8 Derrick House in Tulse Hill . My younger brother and sisters changed schools and went to Fenstanton, but my parents wanted my to finish my education in Clapham and then move onto secondary school with my older brother. So that's what I did. It meant getting up very early and getting 2 buses to school, but I thought nothing of it at that age.

Secondary school was a completely different world. I went to Tulse Hill [left] which was an all boys school and held about 2000 pupils in quite the most imposing building I had ever seen. It was glass curtain building of eight floors, about 100 classrooms, four lifts, six gyms and extensive open and paved grounds.

I sometimes had trouble coping with school life as I was quite small back in those days [yes, it's hard to believe, but true!] and was picked on quite a bit, but I managed to stay afloat. I enjoyed art and technical drawing, but I was also good at the academic stuff as well as playing sports. I was near the top of my year in terms of academic studies and looked forward to doing well in my exams.

Unfortunately things didn't go well and I proceeded to fail most of them! I stayed on into the sixth form where I scraped together a few more qualifications. I then went to South East London College in Lewisham where I managed to make up for lost time and got a BTEC Diploma in Business Studies. I really enjoyed my time there, made some good friends and even got onto the student council. I started the next course up, but got bored after about a month and decided to go and find a job instead.

Work, work, work ...

My first job was in the Civil Service where I worked in 3 departments over a 2 year period and made some good friends and gained some good experiences. I left in 1987 because I wanted to earn more money and since then have worked in London, Swindon and Oxford.

I am current working for Incisive Media and have just been promoted to Team Leader, Web Production. Here is my CV.

I'm also an Operations Manager for AP Security, involved in event security at some of the biggest venues in the country including Wembley Stadium, Brixton Academy and The Forum and the The O₂ Arena.

... and now

I live in Edmonton, North London with Claire, Kayleigh, Chloe and of course Adam. My immediate family is very close to my heart - Mum, Stan, Linden, Claudette, Hortense, Joyce, Simon, Tashan, Ramone, Nyron, Connie, Charlene, Nicole, Paige, Sian, Sabrina, Mica and Reneé and Naiya. I also have 4 great-nephews and 2 great-nieces.

Even if I don't get in touch as often as I should, I will always love them and they are always in my thoughts. I hope they know that they can always talk to me.

I must also mention my Dad, who passed away many years ago now, but is never far from my thoughts every day. I just wish he'd been here to see us all grown up.

Obviously I haven't been able to put everything about my life into these few paragraphs, but for those that know me I hope you've learnt a little bit more and for those who don't, I hope you've found this and the rest of my site of some interest.