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Personal Profile
After leaving school at sixteen with minimal qualifications, I was fortunate to secure a job as an apprentice Carpenter and Joiner at a local family firm, being the first person they employed outside the family. I attended college one day and two evenings a week over three years, whilst learning the skills at the Joiners Shop, and obtained near top marks in Carpentry and Joinery, City and Guilds level, which was decidedly better than anything I had achieved previously! And so, my love and passion for woodwork began.
At this Joiners Shop I mastered the skills of the trade making bespoke joinery items, such as doors, windows, stairs, and cabinets of all styles, shapes, and sizes, out of softwood, hardwood, and manmade board. I moved to another Joiners Shop and then two councils where I worked in Housing Maintenance; it was during this period that I married Helen.
Following this I taught Carpentry and Joinery at City and Guilds level at The Skill Centre, giving me a taste for teaching. Partnership, followed by self-employment, and setting up my own business, brought me back to my first love of making bespoke joinery; it was during this period that our first daughter Rachel was born.
A period of recession followed and to make ends meet I found myself working at a secure unit for young offenders, as a Residential Social Worker, it was during this period that our second daughter Bethany was born. Middlesex University followed, where I studied Design Technology at BA level and qualified as a teacher in 2000.
I then pursued a career in education, initially teaching DT in mainstream secondary schools; it was at the outset of this period that our third daughter Emma was born, and we also started fostering, when relocating from Essex to Hampshire. Although I experienced some success in education, gaining a MA in Management in Education and promoted to Deputy Headteacher at a local Pupil Referral Unit, first and foremost I consider myself a joiner at heart, with a passion for woodwork, which was partially fulfilled through teaching DT.
Having retired from education I am now pursuing my passion for woodwork once again, with a combined desire to inspire and instruct others in the same, whether that be for profit or pleasure, or both!