I’m a 34-year-old senior solutions architect at a global IT consultancy firm. This means I draw a lot of pretty pictures on whiteboards and do a lot of PowerPoint presentations. I’m a former British soldier who spent five years on Her Majesty’s payroll – but don’t hold that against me. I joined the army after spending three years working in IT support and as a developer so, when I’d done my time, coming back to that industry was the natural choice.
To me it doesn’t really feel like work, and being able to get paid to do something that you would consider a hobby is a real bonus. It’s a good job I’m competent with technology, as the BTec national diploma in performing arts I did immediately after leaving school is worth about as much as brass buttons these days.
I live in Hackney, in a townhouse with my freelance photographer girlfriend and two cats. We are very much the east London cliche couple, except that I don’t have a beard, and she moved here before it was cool. We both like brunch and artisan sourdough, though. In my spare time I do a lot of technology blogging, play the guitar, and voraciously read my way through books (sci-fi and fantasy from a fiction standpoint, and history, politics and technology from a non-fiction perspective). I am also attempting to get back in shape after too many years of idleness – unfortunately, my knees aren’t what they used to be. They say the hardest thing about exercising is getting off the sofa, and I can vouch for that.
I began reading the Guardian in my late teens. All papers have an agenda of some sorts, and the Guardian’s aligns most closely with the majority of my sentiments. I am probably rare among Graun readers in that I also subscribe to the Times, because while I am very socially liberal my politics are more centrist than either of these papers, so it’s nice to get a bit of balance sometimes. I really like the Guardian’s investigative pieces – on WikiLeaks, the Panama Papers, that sort of thing. The paper has brought a lot of things to light that would otherwise have stayed buried, and I applaud that. I also particularly enjoy its opinion pieces and the football coverage is excellent. Top marks to the Football Weekly podcast crew as well.
I follow the Twitter feed, and interact via both that, and the comment threads, though you have to be careful sometimes – that way madness lies.
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