I became interested in the organ from about 1969 and played for the occasional service at the church. Just after starting at the local grammar school in 1970 I became full time organist at one of our daughter churches and have been an organist somewhere since then. I was assistant organist at Staveley from 1973 until I moved to Clacton in 1983. For a time, 1978-1979 I took over as organist at Staveley.

My own deep interest in organs and the link between music and mathematics has driven my own study of the organ; which continues to this day. The latest examples of this are my involvement in the rebuilding of St. James's organ and the building of a digital organ to serve as a temporary replacement for it.

While at Staveley the choir was invited to sing at various cathedrals. The first was Wakefield. We regularly sang at Derby Cathedral from 1975 onwards during August (where I first met Eric Leigh, the president of Clacton Choral Society!) and I was able to play the organs there. We also sang on an ad-hoc basis at Southwell Minster with our choir taking the 3-hour Good Friday Services one year (with me playing). We also sang evensong there during the October half-term week, which meant I spent my 23rd birthday playing there.

We also sang/played in Manchester and Sheffield. In 1979 we were invited to perform evensong in Ampleforth Abbey in North Yorkshire for Ash Wednesday. As far as I know we were the first (perhaps only) non-Catholic choir to sing there.

We also were invited to sing (and for myself and the main organist to play) in St. Paul's London and also St. George's Chapel, Windsor. These two are, of course, the peak in almost all aspects of singing and playing.

After moving to Clacton in November 1983I became organist at St. John's Gt. Clacton in January 1984 until just before its closure. I then took over at St. James's (officially) on Advent Sunday 1985. Having played for a few services and concerts there since the summer, I've been there ever since and have now taken over as choir-master too.

When I left the grammar school in 1977 after taking my A Levels (but failing my chemistry practical and so not going to Manchester to study electronics) I took up another one of my passions, computing, but only because the offer of a job at the then Coalite Smokeless Fuels head office as a trainee in their computer department came just before the offer of a job for a local organ building firm! I moved to Clacton in 1983 to work at the then Town & Country Building Society in their computing department, undertook some freelance work in the late 1980s and moved to the University of Essex in January 1993 where I still work as Computing Systems Manager in one of its departments.

Since starting at Essex University I have completed my B.Sc. (hons) in Computing and also my M.Sc in Computing; both with the Open University. After doing 10 years of study with them in computing I decided to re-start my musical studies and am studying music with the OU. I'm currently holding off claiming a B.A. in music so that I can do extra studies to get an honours degree in Humanities and Music.