I was thrust upon the unsuspecting world on 4th April 1974, in Sussex, UK. Here I spent my formative years, with my stomping ground being around Henfield, West Sussex, the village we lived in. At the ripe old age of 4, I went to St Peters C of E Primary school in the village. Once finished there, all the local kids had to be shipped off to a nearby secondary school – Steyning Grammar. Boy, does that place bring back memories – few of them good!
After the first 2 years there, my parents had finally had enough of me and shipped me off to boarding school in East Anglia. Apparently they had been planning it since I was about 2 or 3, but it still came as a surprise to me… Quite a big step for a 13 years old sproglett like me... Still, Culford School wasn’t such a bad place. It was near Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, UK, and set in some 480 acres of quite nice grounds, with 18th Century school buildings, etc... Not to mention a pretty good academic and out-of-school activities reputation.
After completing GCSE’s there, I went on to take A levels, also at Culford. I’m sure you don’t really want to know all the academic details, suffice to say I did OK in math and science type subjects. While at school, I did quite a lot of sailing, and was also involved with hockey and rugby, squash and lifesaving. I ended up Sailing Captain of the school, and the last few seasons were quite successful (both as a team and individually). That set the background for going to University – and I ended up choosing Bath Uni, in the South West of the UK.
I went to Bath Uni straight out of school, and read Mechanical Engineering from 1992 to 1996. Quite a torrid & turbulent time, and I had to retake the second year for one reason and another (and I can’t even blame being away from home for the first time!).
While there I continued sailing both competitively and teaching beginners, and also started target shooting. I got involved with running both the Shooting and Sailing clubs at the University, and represented British Universities for Smallbore Rifle Shooting - having some successes (my best being 2nd in the Student Nationals, which I achieved twice). I also did a couple of trips abroad – sailing in Dubai for the Worlds where I came 18th, and to Freiburg (Germany) for the European Student Shooting Championships. Did OK there too but didn’t figure at the top of the results – the Europeans (Germans & Czechs at least) are out of this Country's league in 3P. I ended up far too committed to both, and with not enough time to do either well, so pretty much packed in the sailing, apart from the occasional jolly.
In ’96, having got myself into debt (try to find a student who hasn’t at some point been there!), I couldn’t really afford to graduate (and pay back the loans) and wanted to stay involved with university life (and sport). So I enrolled on a second degree at Bath – MSc in Fluid Power Systems (Hydraulics to most of us). On finishing that, and still being heavily involved with the University clubs, I eventually had to got a job… Enter the real world:
I finally emerged from education, dazed & blinking, into the daylight of June 1999. And only then started looking for gainful employment. I had a part time job as a Pizza Delivery Urchin (or Portable Organ Donor, as we sometimes seemed to be), and thought this would be a bit of a handicap to a proper job. And it was, too – working ‘til 02:00 most nights, and the pay so poor you can’t afford too much time off… Then try getting up and off to an interview the next morning… After a few months of trying to find the right job (I’m picky and a perfectionist, where it matters), I decided to get a temping job with better hours. That worked fine (but I can’t say I enjoyed working on a badly run production line, doing data entry, or many other of the ‘jobs’ I was sent to do).
In March 2000, I got a bit more lucky. One of the local companies I had approached had a temporary vacancy, for a placement student really, but it seemed to fit the bill. So I spent a very enjoyable 5 months doing some product testing and development for Cross Manufacturing (in their water filtration department). It was very interesting work, and a good company to work for. It was only a short term project – I was employed until the testing was done, and as it was beginning to wind up, I got a permanent job offer from ABB Offshore Systems, also locally.
ABB Offshore Systems (now Vetco Gray Controls) is a company that makes the control systems (electronics and hydraulics, & sometimes fibre optics) for offshore oil & gas production. This is both the equipment topsides (on the platform or shore-based) and subsea (up to depths of 3000m). It measures what's going on in the field, and throttles back production at the wellhead (if there's too much sand being produced) or injects the right amounts of additives to stop the oil / gas / condensate from waxing on the way back up to the surface. This is a pretty harsh environment for electronics, and the kit is expected to be reliable for around 25 years without maintenance... There is also kit that goes downhole (even worse environment – crude oil is very corrosive, at pressures of up to 650 bar, and maybe up to 250 deg C… Add to that the possibility of sand in and around the mechanical workings, and it adds up to trouble.)
I was at VG for about five and a half years, and it took me to Brazil for a month (commissioning), and up to Aberdeen for a couple of fortnights (qualification testing), and around the country visiting suppliers. It’s been very interesting, involved, and pretty challenging at times. The money wasn’t the best, but there was as much overtime as you wanted (most of the time), and the trips away have paid quite well so overall I’m fairly pleased. But most importantly, I liked the people I worked with (well, most of them at least!).
I have a house in Bath (which I bought in '98), which was let from new in '72. So it was, how shall we say, in need of modernisation... It took a while getting there, but work commitments were preventing me from really getting where I need to be with it. So I took a sabbatical from March '06 to get it (and the collection of old, dead winter hack motorcycles) sorted and in a sellable / rent-able condition.
Now that's done, I'm working as a contractor, earning rather better rates, and having a variety of interesting jobs to expand my horizons - both figuratively, literally and professionally. It means you've got to hit the ground running on any new project, and to be pretty competent at what you do - not having a notice period or any employment rights does somewhat focus the mind! On the up side, it's rewarding to be able to help solve the sticky problems no-one else wants, to get projects through, and to make a difference - it what we're hired to do! It also means you may have to drop everything, if the client requires, which in part explains why the house in Bath is now let out and I live in Wokingham - a delightful little market town in Berkshire, near the Surrey border, within a hour of the tech hub around Oxford, the Oil & Gas companies based in West London, and various other large technical manufacturing / research companies...
In late 2009, wanting to meet up with a few new people in the Woking/Bisley area, I put an ad up on a dating agency - being very clear I was single, and wasn't in the right place for a relationship, but was just looking to meet folks around that area (as I travelled there most weekends, for target shooting competitions / practice). The way I was thinking, it would be good to meet people other than those you've just spent the day competing with, as conversations would be about something new & interesting rather than picking over why things went wrong on the day (missed that wind change, threw that shot into the maggie / outer, equipment failure, etc etc) which after a while gets a bit samey... And so I met Hannah, my long-suffering other half, who also wasn't looking to change her life but was wanting to stop the nagging / matchmaking of her housemates... Suffice to say, we got on pretty well, have shared values & morals, so went camping up on Dartmoor a couple of times. And then both took a 7-month sabatical to travel the world (and for me to enter the long range target shooting world championships in Oz, October 2011). Now we've got a place together, sail a dinghy together occasionally, both have interests of our own, and ... 'Nuf said...
With all that, I don’t get as much time to do other stuff as I would really like. Still, that’s a pretty small complaint if it keeps me happy!
No doubt you’re thoroughly bored by now, but well done for getting this far! I’m impressed!
Andrew Wilde, 2016