|
suttree
|
Suttree is the title of a novel by Cormac McCarthy that I read a few years ago.
Starting with work, here's a brief guide to where I've been employed over the last few years;
UpMyStreet
http://www.upmystreet.com
Selftrade
http://www.selftrade.co.uk
ICL
http://www.icl.com
And now for the bits inbetween all that - I'm a programmer, I write code. In Perl, PHP and Python. It tends to be database related somewhere, and currently that's either MySQL or Sybase, and it also tends to be Apache that is used as the web server. So I've got a lot of day to day unix/linux experience which is a nice by-product of working in an open source programming environment.
I *used* to be a musician, in the same way that I used to be a smoker - it's not something that you get rid of that easily :o) I've played in bands continually since I was about 15, and being in a good band that has played together for a year or more is just the best thing. It's like watching a band and seeing the communication onstage, a nod and the thing changes. That kind of flexibility is fun to watch, and it's even better to be part of. There are still a few websites around from the last band I was in, but they're no longer maintained. Like this one - http://www.planetyoyo.uklinux.net.
Tilt/Chaser/Planet Yo Yo were as good as it got for me, thats why I've not carried it since then. In brief, we played lots of local gigs, a few of the Camden/London gigs and a night at the Garage (memorable from the off, when I walked into the toilets to find the drugs squad taking evidence, to the end, when our bass player broke a string during the opener, and caused my guitar to do the same shortly after - I think they must have made a pact before we went on stage). I have lots of great memories of that band, and photographs, and rehearsal tapes where we really hit our peak, but some of my favourite moments came with an earlier band, Parchman Farm. We played our first gig at the 100 Club, we were just kids. We played one or two more gigs around London, then returned to the 100 Club, and played what turned out the be our last gig together. We were a very *dynamic* band.
Around about the same time all of that was going on, I was writing novels. I had a Joni Mitchell approach to it, like farming. I wrote 3 novels at once, in the hope that writers block in one instance would be cured by turning to a completely different subject matter, and it worked. It took about two years to finish the first of the three. I named it 'The Veil of the Stage', bought a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook and began writing letters. I think I wrote to just about everybody in there, and eventually I got more than just favourable rejections. Sadly, the company that showed the most interest were taken over by a $big_corporation, and that was the end of that. After some vicious editing, I'm left with a fraction of each novel. Still, one day I'll have the time to finish them off, and anyway, since then I've begun other novels, so I'm hopeful.
I also spent two years studying for a computer programming qualification with Computeach International. It was a home study course that I managed to fit in whenever I had a quite moment. I learnt a lot (COBOL, Pascal, C) and it helped that I had to write the code by hand, on graph paper, send it away by post for marking, then re-correct the errors when it was returned. The qualification was enough to get me a break with ICL, and I worked there for almost two years. I met Jane there. We get married on 9th November, 2002 :o)
C.V.
Available here in .txt and .doc formats.
Email:
duncan@lineone.net
ICQ:
82599543
|
|
|