biography

Here are a few milestones in an unusual life...

1953

I was born in Perth, Scotland, with wonderful parents and a very comfortable family life on the outskirts of town, just a short walk from Kinnoull Hill. I often walk there to this day and there's a few photos from around the hill on the site.

education

I did my best not to learn anything but had some rudimentary Maths, English and Stuff hammered into me by endless repetition. Learning must have by-passed my brain and seeped in through my pores. I loved Art at school but never really pursued it then. I remember trying to make new colours by mixing everything together - it usually just turned into brown.

university

Somehow I managed to get a place at St Andrews to study Maths and Psychology. Better subjects for me would have been Day-Dreaming, Advanced Cloud Watching and Not Really Being There. After a year St Andrews decided that Not Really Being There was their choice for me too.

dropping out

My first paid work was writing cartoon scripts for D C Thomson in Dundee. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I had stuck at it. I've always loved Dudley Watkins' drawing in the old Dandy's and Beano's - just look at Desperate Dan in an old issue and compare it to today's work. I was writing the words though and it was hard to come up with acceptable ideas.

From then, a series of odd moves and jobs including a spell of hod-carrying on a building site, working on a pheasant farm, erecting warehouse racking, quite a long spell of helping to make reproduction antique furniture and doing some French Polishing.

guitars

Ever since about eleven years old I had been obsessed with guitars. Thanks to my parents, I studied Musical Instrument Technology at Newark Tech College, then worked at John Birch Guitars in Birmingham - the number one custom guitar makers back in the seventies. After leaving Birch's in 1976  I had a fantastic summer working with friends on an organic small holding near Aylesbury. That autumn I moved back to Perth and set up a workshop with my old friend Stone who did Leatherwork while I did Guitar Making and Reparing...

More soon...