Into the fray

A bit of pre-amble: From an English northern working-class background, I had the luck to have enough intelligence to get me good exam results and a degree from Manchester University (gained mostly by hanging onto the shirt-tails of someone far brighter than me). This led me to a career in IT at which I was, at best, average. I ran away to Australia for 7.5 months, screwed up another job when I got back (I still cringe about the time I tried to blag my way through a presentation on C++ to the rest of the company - it was on my CV, so I must know about it, right?).

Mostly through lack of options, I went back to Uni at Manchester to do a PhD ("A test of endurance rather than intelligence" so it suited me fine). During this time, what I thought were recurrent, lapses brought on by stress and tiredness turned out to be temporal lobe epilepsy. At the end of my PhD, I blagged my way into a job with colleagues from university. This turned out to be a turning point for me career-wise as I finally twigged what software development is all about and became, if I may be so bold, rather proficient (more later and again, throughout).

I got married during this time to a French girl, we have 2 children and 5 years ago moved to France. Now living in Lyon, I have carved a career in software development management and integrated pretty well into French society (although I have plenty of things to say about France and the French).

That's about it really. The rest of this will elaborate on these themes until I run out of thoughts and motivation...here I go...