About the Author | Zen Mischief

Personal

I was born in January 1951 in Bloomsbury, London, England. Technically I am a Cockney as University College Hospital where I was born is within the sound of Bow Bells – on a good day! I married Noreen in September 1979 in Chiswick, London. We have no children (from choice) but three cats. Currently we’re living in west London, just a couple of miles from Harrow School and slightly further from Heathrow Airport.

Academic

BA in Chemistry from University of York (1969-1972).
MSc and PhD in Chemical Spectroscopy from University of East Anglia (1972-1976).

Work

I worked for IBM in the United Kingdom from December 1976 until January 2010, when I took early retirement. I ended my career as a Project and Programme Manager with responsibility for the delivery of a suite of IT infrastructure projects, mainly for the IBM internal account, and for task managing the project managers running them. Before this I was one of the Project Managers running the same IT infrastructure projects!

Prior to this my job was project managing PC workstation deployment in the UK, building it into a day-to-day service starting with deployment as part of corporate re-engineering initiatives. And before that I did jobs in technical sales, technical education and most aspects of IT support.

In consequence I’ve a wide range of IT skills including computer security, ISO9000 and IBM mainframe systems programming as well as education and user support; I’m also a trained meeting facilitator. However I’m not (and never have been) an expert on networks or PC hardware, so I’m prone to ask stupid questions about what goes on inside the grey (or beige, or black) boxes. I am however experienced in user support and in consequence can often do problem analysis on applications (even applications I’ve never seen before) very quickly.

Interests

Family history; photography; Anthony Powell; cats; naturism; fish; books; early music; mysticism & comparative religion; science; the English language; old churches … and a passing interest in many other things, which means I have to artificially restrict the number of webpages, blogs etc. I read.

My interest in Anthony Powell stems from reading A Dance to the Music of Time when I had Glandular Fever back in 1983. Powell quickly became one of my heroes – those people in whom one has an irrational interest.

I also seem to be one of those people who acts as a catalyst and facilitator for the personal development of others.

In my time I’ve also been a club cricket captain, league cricket umpire and a school governor … but my spare time is now mostly taken up with the Anthony Powell Society and as Chairman of my GP’s Patient Participation Group.

Dislikes

Politics; censorship; puritan attitudes; prudery; clothes; closed & blinkered minds; the lack of logical thinking; wilful stupidity; darts; Africa (especially elephants); soap operas; the performing arts; risk.

But Beware

I have a well developed sense of cynicism and the ridiculous, and I’m frequently to be found playing “Devil’s advocate” with people – just to make them think! Your challenge is to work out when I’m playing Devil’s advocate, when I’m being cynical and when I’m being straight – even I don’t always know! If in doubt take my words at face value and don’t try reading hidden messages into them – they’re probably not there!

[Please also see my Online CV.]