(You are currently visiting Pete's Place)
(This Page was last revised: September 28, 2001)
So, you want to know something about me, huh? I guess I should begin at the beginning! Of course, that raises the question of where (or when) my story actually begins. Where does any story truly begin? Or end, for that matter! One might say that each story, each life, is a thread: linked to, and intertwined with the myriad threads of other lives with whom one interacts on a daily basis. Come to think of it, the Ancient Greeks did say something like that, didn't they? Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
But where does my story begin? From the time I started work? From the time I left school? From the time I started school? From the moment of my birth? With my parents, or my grandparents? With my ten-times-Great Grandfather, Bartholomew Kitcher? Certainly a story exists for each of these cases - and while it seems apparent that the further back you go, the less relevance it has on my story, it is also fairly obvious that if any of those other lives had been different, I may not exist now!
Fortunately for you, I am not going to go back that far - not here anyway! Besides, you came here expecting a bit of personal history, didn't you? Not a philosophical debate! Although maybe the above couple of paragraphs say something about me as well. Or not!
So, what is there to say? I was born in 1968 in Southampton, England, but at an early age we - my parents and myself - emigrated. Leaving the shores of sunny England, we came to live Down Under: Australia. I moved around a fair bit while growing up: we were following Dad, who was following work as a contract draughtsman. (That's draftsman
for the Americans amongst us.) In the course of the next twenty years we lived all up and down the East coast of Australia, from Townsville in the North to Melbourne in the South, and around to Adelaide. We also spent a couple of years in New Plymouth, at the base of Mt Egmont in New Zealand; and a couple of years in Miri, Sarawak, East Malaysia. Childhood certainly had its moments!
Finally, of course, we settled down - although it was probably more a case of forgetting to move! :D After a few years in the same town we decided to make it official. One mortgage later we have made our home in historic Redcliffe, on a peninsula just north of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. Now Dad is retired, and I have picked up the reins as a contract draughtsman. (Mind you, the job description has changed somewhat over the last ten years - and by preference I tend to do more programming than draughting anyway!)
Every so often I think of writing my memoirs, if only to set down my memories for posterity. Like so many of my other projects, however, it hasn't happened yet! However, I have created a brief Chronology listing the places I've lived - it's a start.
My immediate family consists of myself, my parents, and my younger sister. And a cat. I also have a few half-siblings back in England, but their life-threads rarely cross with mine. By popular demand (and I think a single query can be called popular demand) I have started a little photo gallery of me 'n my family. It is, like everything else around here, incomplete. However, those of you who are brave of heart and strong of stomach (and fast of modem) may wish to take a look at my Rogue's Gallery.