I was born in 1952 in Wakefield, UK and spent my first ten years in Sharlston, then a mining village, followed by eight in Crofton, a mile nearer Wakefield. I went to London University, obtaining a BSc from Imperial College and a PGCE from King's. After two years as a VSO in Kenya, I taught in London, devoting much of my spare time to assisting an NGO concerned with human development. After completing an MA in 1992, I worked in Brunei until 1999 and then in Zayed University, United Arab Emirates, for three years. Since 2003, I have lived in Spain, completing a PhD in education's role in Philippine development and my first published novel, Mission.

My passion is ...

Music and cooking. Writing and reading are in there as well.

I know too much about ...

many, many things ... and too little about anything.

My parents always told me ...

To be honest.

My childhood ambition ...

To be a dustbin man.

My favorite memory ...

Getting married.

Why I write ...

I dearly want to visualise a concept, sculpt it in words and communicate it.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

at the moment, I am reading lots of Julian Barnes. Musically, it's Zemlinsky and Richard Strauss.

My first job ...

was teaching in Migwani Harambee Secondary School, Migwani, Kenya

My best moment ...

Getting married.

My inspiration ...

My wife.

Creative Writing > Short Stories Short stories: Strangers

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Strangers

We arrived more than two hours later than planned, but the west of England summer light had not yet faded even to dusk. A soft golden glow was just growing across the sunset, which had just tinged a flat-calm sea beyond this tumbling village. We were tourists here, strangers in this small, tightly-knit place.

For us it was just a tour, a long weekend snatched in common from the clutches of our combined, ever demanding careers. I felt utterly liberated, that beautiful evening, as we walked the quarter mile or so down the steep dry cobbles from the obligatory car park into the...

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