I grew up beside Morecambe Bay and left Art College during the high unemployment of the early nineteen eighties. I traveled around the doing various casual jobs before settling down to work as a thatcher in North Dorset.

My early jobs included apple, strawberry and hop picking, tree planting, T-shirt printing and thorn-bashing for Dorset Trust for Nature Conservation.

When our boys had grown up Sue and I took to walking holidays and completed a number of long-distance paths, mostly in Britain but occasionally abroad.

Since taking a break from thatching I have completed an MA in Creative Writing, won a poetry competition and returned to the North West after three decades away. My interests include a love of mountains and fell walking, trad rock climbing, reading, writing and a lifelong love of history.

My love of birds remains. I kept a hawk for a few years, flying him at dawn over farmland in Dorset before bowing him out on my customer’s lawn at work.