I was born in the cottage hospital of Fyvie in Aberdeenshire in 1961. I grew up on various farms in Aberdeenshire until I was eleven and then our family moved to Morayshire. I did not enjoy High School there. I was frequently belted for not being able to do my homework or producing illegible work most teachers couldn't read or couldn't be bothered trying to read. As a result of this, I was often shoved into special needs classes where the teacher taught nothing but religion. At the age of fifteen, a month before my sixteenth birthday I joined the British Army. I remember the recruiting sergeant coming out laughing with my test results in his hands and telling me I could not get a trade in the army as my test results were too low. I didn't care, I wanted to run up and down hills with a gun and blow shit up. Thankfully I was bright enough for that and I joined the infantry. I served a total of seven years under the colours, from the jungles of Central America to the streets of Northern Ireland. My home and family were the men of the 1st Battalion The Gordon Highlanders.
When I left the Army I found getting a job extremely difficult at first. My first job was driving a chippy van and my first full-time job was at ICI Powfoot where I made gunpowder. From there I have had many jobs. I have worked in building sites and on the roads. In peat bogs and kitchens washing dishes. I have waited tables and driven furniture removal vans. Picked fruit and vegetables in season and driven Taxis. In essence, I could and would turn my hand to whatever put food on the table and kept a roof over my head.
At the age of twenty-five and having been a year unemployed I reached one of the major milestones in my life. Disillusioned and getting desperate I was persuaded to try a part-time course at the college. Of course, I had to pick the one thing that scared me the most, computers. It was to my great surprise that not only was I able to complete the course but I enjoyed it as well. So I signed up for a full year. For the first time in my life, I found that I could communicate with people on the same level. It was a revelation. It was then I began to suspect for the first time that I wasn't as stupid as I had been led to believe throughout my life to that point. However, the winds of fate picked me up and blew me away before I could take it any farther and it was another twenty-five years before I would return to pick up where I had left off.
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