I was born in 1957 at Hackney Hospital, along with my twin brother, David. We joined our brothers, Ken and Roy, and our sisters, Pat and Barbara.  At the time, our family lived in a first-floor flat at 6 Berberis House in Bow.  My father had just lost his job, and my mother left soon after David and I were born.  My uncle Jim helped us by providing food, financial support, and helping my father find work.

 

Soon afterwards, all of us children were moved to Hutton Poplars, a residential home for children from across East and North London.  Hutton Poplars had its own school, a shop, an indoor swimming pool, and numerous ancillary buildings alongside the accommodation for staff and children.  It was officially known as the Training School and Residential Home and could house between 400 and 700 children at any one time.

 

On each reaching 15 years old, Roy, Barbara, Ken, and Pat moved back to our family flat at 6 Berberis House in London.  At weekends, David and I were allowed to visit our family.  At first, our father or Uncle Jim would accompany us, but as we grew older, we were able to make the journey by ourselves.

 

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie 127 (with a Dakon lens), which I discovered in a drawer when I was seven years old. It had no film, and there wasn't enough money to buy some. Life at home was difficult.  The flat was overcrowded, and my father had to sleep on the sofa. Before long, Pat, Ken, and Barbara married and moved out.

 

My first job was at a printing company in Islington (N1), where I folded letterheads before starting a two-year apprenticeship.  My boss realised that I struggled with reading and writing.  One day he gave me a leather-bound copy of The Wind in the Willows.  Later, he followed it with Three Men in a Boat.  I still thank whoever came up with the word that perfectly describes the agony of being completely absorbed in those books, unable to stop reading for even a moment.  That word was... AWESOME!

 

While working at the printers, I became interested in hi-fi stereo equipment through a couple of colleagues.  My first system consisted of a basic Pioneer amplifier, a pair of Denon speakers, and a TEAC cassette deck.  Several years later, I upgraded to a Cambridge A&R A60 amplifier, a Rega Planar 1 turntable, and a pair of Celestion Ditton 44 speakers, which I still own today.  In 2017, I rebuilt the crossovers in both speakers.  The upgraded components were much larger than the originals, so I had to mount the crossovers in separate external boxes and placed the speakers on top of the crossover boxes.

 

I left the printing company and enrolled in a three-month basic electronics course at West Ham College.  The course was mainly intended for people who needed to understand the new electronics being introduced into industry, many of whom worked for London Regional Transport (LRT).

 

After completing the course, one of the tutors encouraged me to enrol in one of the new three-year BTEC programmes.  I spent my first year at West Ham College before completing the final two years at Greenhithe Merchant Navy College.  To save money while studying at West Ham, I would cycle home during the one-hour lunch break, prepare and eat my lunch, then cycle back to college in time for the afternoon classes.

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At the same time my father, Roy, and David moved to another flat in the London Borough of Poplar E14, at 326 Rhodeswell Road.  It was more modern, a lot bigger, and had stairs, with the bedrooms downstairs and the living room and kitchen upstairs.

 

The Merchant Navy College was a residential college.  I had my own cabin and made many friends from the cabins in the same block.  The course was Marine Telecommunications, and with the course I completed at West Ham College, it led to the Marine Communications BTEC Diploma.  This was challenging because I had to catch up on a year's work covering Rules and Regulations and Morse code.  I didn't finish practising Morse code until the final week.  I passed.  I suspect the tutor was very understanding during the Morse code examination, where I had to both send and decode messages. 

 

When I left the Merchant Navy College, I got a job with Cable & Wireless and signed a two-year contract (1980–1982) to work in Tortola, a small island in the Caribbean.  Before leaving for the Caribbean, I purchased a Nikon F2 camera.

 

My job involved maintaining the electronic equipment used for voice communications.  Some of the communications systems operated over submarine cables laid between the islands and still used vacuum valves in the terminal equipment because they could operate at higher power levels.  Others used transistors, while some of the newer equipment was beginning to incorporate integrated circuits.

 

While I was there, I was able to do a lot of scuba diving and earned my PADI Open Water Diver and Divemaster certifications.  I also had the opportunity to use an underwater Nikon camera that belonged to the dive shop where I volunteered.  I enjoyed helping with the guest divers, cleaning the boat, filling the air tanks, and testing the regulators before each dive.

 

On my final qualifying dive, I was taking photographs of a particular fish that swam upside down amongst the small caves.  Suddenly, my mask was pulled off, my air tank was turned off, and my regulator was pulled from my mouth.  At first, I could only make out the faint outline of a diver in front of me.  I grabbed his alternate regulator, took a couple of breaths, and then let it go.  I put my own regulator back into my mouth, turned my air back on, replaced my mask, and cleared it by blowing bubbles through the regulator.  The diver, who was my instructor, signalled that we should return to the surface.  When we surfaced, he had a huge smile on his face and said, "Congratulations, you've passed your PADI Divemaster certificate."

 

When I returned to London, I felt uncomfortable with the family, so I went to Europe for a month traveling through France and Belgium to West Berlin in Germany.  Before I started this journey I spoke to my sister Barbara and asked if she had any details about our mother, Hildegard Anna Maria AHSMUS.  All she had was when she visited our mum at the age of seven, she remembered going to West Berlin to see her grandma.  So, I booked myself into a hotel and that evening went to a phone booth and looked up the surnames of Ahsmus, there were 12 names.  I phoned the first name on the list and got a woman who didn't speak any English at all. The intensity was too much so I went back to the hotel and would try to make a call the next morning.

 

I got up the next morning, had breakfast at the hotel then went to the same phone booth and called the second name on the list.  The person was a woman who spoke perfect English.  I asked if her name was Hildegard Anna Maria Ahsmus in which she replied yes.  I then told her what my name was and that of my Fathers and the rest of the family.  She then gave me her address and explained how to get there by bus.  I was to meet her the following day.  When we met at her flat, there was no family embrace.  We were total strangers with a paternal link.  She also had a friend there to ensure I was legit, and that she could see as my face was like my fathers, all went well.  She suggested we meet again at a certain cafe on the Kurfürstendamm in two days’ time.

 

The next day I went into the central part of West Berlin and notice there was a demonstration going on.  I took the camera out and walked to the front to get some shots. The loud speaking woman on the stage wouldn't look down so I kept wiggling the mic cable over her shoes.  It took a couple of minutes, but she did look down and I got the shot.  She didn't hold back from frowning and making it clear I was being a pest.

 

I stop at a bar on the same street and went in to wet my lips.  There was one other person sitting at the bar who kindly offered a drink, a schnapps.  I refused but he insisted, in a nice way.  So, I drank the snaps and took my time.  We started talking and I started to enjoy his company.  Then we had another schnapps, then another and another.  Each time I took my time.  We must have been there for an hour and a half when I decided to go back to the hotel. I got up from the stool...and then it hit me!  The effort to keep upright and head towards the exit was possibly a tad worse than climbing Mount Everest. And like climbing Mount Everest it takes a lot of concentration, skill and determination to make it look like "you're good".  I made it back to the hotel OK.  Embarrassed, nope!  I was too engaged with my feet, and trying to get them in the right place at the right time.

 

I met my mother the next day on the Kurfürstendamm and she guided me to a lovely restaurant, she was dressed so elegantly.  Me, Jeans, tee shirt, boots, and plus a ruck sack.  

 

I attended a one-year photography course in Earl's Court WC1, London, covering the fundamentals of cameras, film, and darkroom techniques.  I purchased a Nikon F5 camera and a sturdy Manfrotto tripod.  The course was intended to last three terms, but I could only afford to complete two terms before I ran out of money, I needed to find a job.

 

My next two jobs were at the Natural History Museum and the Barbican Centre.  The Barbican was creating a gallery for Japanese art.  The money I earned allowed me to buy an enlarger, processing trays, a small film developing tank, chemicals, and photographic paper.  I converted our kitchen into a lightproof darkroom and began developing black-and-white photographs.  Eventually, however, I realised I needed to earn a proper living.  There was a government run employment agency just around the corner.

 

I then got a job at the ADT Computer Systems Centre in Holborn, WC1.  I had a great boss who had the patience to explain the technical details more than once whenever I needed it.  I loved the job, and the people were great.  I was given a company car and regularly travelled to Birmingham and Manchester.

 

After I had been there for some time, I was asked to show some new recruits around our systems and explain how the equipment worked to keep our clients safe.  When I had finished the presentation and answered everyone's questions, one of the recruits said, "How did you learn all that?".  I had always been keen to understand how things worked.  I was fortunate to have a knowledgeable boss, plenty of technical manuals, and, above all, a genuine curiosity.  I enjoyed learning how every part of the system worked because I simply wanted to know.

 

At this time, I moved to a house in the docklands (aka Isle of Dogs), living on the top floor which was an open design and had a large veranda for a barbeque with seating. It was adjacent to another house with the same design, including the veranda.  In the summertime the woman next door would sunbathe in the nude.  The builders working two blocks away would gather to watch and peer during their break times.

 

The Dockland was in a state of change, and fast.  I watched each day as I went to work on the new dockland railway, the building of Canary Wharf, changing form a deep pit in the ground to a 75-storey skyscraper.  Then came the yuppies.

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I then moved to an Apple Centre, again on the Docklands.  I worked to gain experience with computers, specifically the Apple Macintosh—all nine inches of it.  Compared with the IBM PCs of the time, the Macintosh was an all-in-one computer with a built-in nine-inch screen and a graphical user interface (GUI).  It required a mouse and came with its own Macintosh keyboard, which was quite different from the PC world.

 

My main interest was learning how to network computers running different operating systems.  At home in the London Docklands, I had a Macintosh, a Windows PC, an IBM OS/2 PC, and a Unix PC.  My goal was simply to learn how to connect them all into a working network.  The frustrating part was having to pay £100 for the IBM OS/2 networking client software.  Even so, each operating system supported TCP/IP networking—the same protocol that still underpins the Internet today.  Eventually, I got everything working together.

 

Unfortunately, the Apple Centre went into liquidation.  I spent some time working with the directors to rebuild the business, but that company also failed.  One of the salesperson then invited me to help start another Apple Macintosh business in London, with a colleague working in Birmingham.  I stayed there for about a year, working long hours.  I loved the work, but the business was financially precarious, so it was time to look for another job.  

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My final job in the UK was at Bank of America in Aldgate EC3, London.  When I joined, the bank they had two computer rooms, which were later consolidated into a single data centre on the lower floor.  While at Bank of America, I purchased a house that was not too far from where I was the renting.  I decided to take a three-week holiday to New Zealand.  During that trip I met my future wife, Tomoko, who had come from Japan, and we spent several days travelling together.  

 

When I returned to the Docklands my front room was covered in burnt cinders.  The IRA had exploded a bomb very close to Canary Wharf.  But fortunately, there was very little damage done to the any of the buildings.

 

I enjoyed many aspects working at Bank of America, the long hours, the constant pressure, and, most importantly, the excellent team I worked with.  Things changed when new management arrived.  The team changed, the atmosphere changed, and the job was no longer as enjoyable.  I resigned from Bank of America to move to New Zealand with Tomoko.  

 

Between leaving Bank of America and going to New Zealand I spent 5 weeks doing Microsoft courses. After completing these courses I was getting a headache, with sharp pains across my forehead. I went to see a optician, had my eyes tested…it was bad. I now had to ware glasses. The difference was spectacular.

 

I went to New Zealand 8th March 1997 and met up with Tomoko.  We spent some time travelling around New Zealand with friends in a Kombi van.  In Christchurch we parted ways, and caught the ferry to Wellington, and settled at a backpackers.  I found a position at the Police College, and we moved to a rented apartment in Plimmerton.  I thoroughly enjoyed the work, the people and the location.  We also purchased a house and moved from Plimmerton to Titahi Bay.  We soon had Toshiki and Jade with thirteen months between them.  The police were having a major organisational restructuring which prompted me to look for another job.

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My next role was with a small Internet service provider called Actrix in Wellington.  There I learned a great deal about the Internet infrastructure, networking, and peering with other service providers.  It was an exciting time as the Internet continued to grow.  But the bubble was about to burst.  Actrix was about to be sold, so I joined the New Zealand Defence Force. 

 

Once again, I found myself working with an excellent team, this time gaining experience with secure networks.  Some of the projects were technically demanding but extremely rewarding.

 

Later, I worked for another Internet company, Telesmart, before moving into IT contracting.  During that time, I completed contracts for NTT, KiwiWealth, and Inland Revenue.  After many years in the industry, I finally retired, bringing to a close a career that had taken me from the early days of personal computers and networking to the modern Internet era.