My love of plants survived my early training as a botanist and I am a keen gardener and as an amateur botanist enjoy the countryside and the walking that this involves. Actively involved in my local church, I enjoy teaching especially in a more informal setting. My sedentary pursuits include reading and for total escape, Science Fiction (of the science kind) is my preference, but any printed material may be devoured. Since becoming more ill I am enjoying cooking and baking and, for instance, I make all our bread.

I have an illness. I have had it since January 1985. I gave been formally diagnosed as having ME (Myelagic or Myalgic Encephalitis) This is now often called CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). It means that I suffer from permanent headaches and can have times of profound lassitude. Up until 1997, as you can see from my career details above, this did not prevent me from achieving the skills and a position of world-wide authority and responsibility. I did have to be careful not to overdo things, and there were some occasions when I was unable to adhere to a strict schedule but my employers obviously thought the risk worthwhile.. The main trick is to accept the reduced lifestyle that CFS brings and have lower expectations of physical capability. Many people have described one of the symptoms as a reduced ability to think; ‘brain like porage’ but I did not feel that this aspect impacted on my ability to any great degree.

However, in 1997 I had a further attack of whatever causes CFS and my whole lifestyle had to be re-evaluated again. The particular impact this time includes the fact that the headaches not only continued as a permanent feature of my life but became very much more intense and painful and are noise sensitive. They now have effectively reduced my ability to think critically for periods long enough to continue as a professional programmer – or even to enjoy reading as I used to. I still read a lot but not books that demand as great a level of concentration as before. This later attack also increased the frequency and duration of the periods of lassitude with which I am afflicted. I can no longer guarantee any particular date and time up ahead in the future. My friends have got used to agreeing to meeting me with a ‘ring up first and check if it is still OK’ clause in their diaries.

I have not been gainfully employed since March 1997: In addition to the diagnosis of ME in 1985, in 1999 I was classified as 'Incapacitated' by DHSS medical staff.

This does not mean that I am completely incapable. I have typed up material for other people and acted as an editor on papers (extended essays) that have been privately published and was involved in copy editing part of a major work on systematic theology. For some years I have supported the an address-system application at L’Abri-UK which I wrote for them. I have recently ‘sorted out’ (i.e. rewritten) a small accounts system for a local church and I have created and maintain my own web-page. The common factor in all these activities is that I can work at my own pace from home and if I have to take a couple of days or even a week off through tiredness or incapacity it does not impact the results which have not been time critical to that kind of degree. The ‘Accounts System’ is a recent example. I would estimate that ‘in the old days’ it would have cost two, maybe three days of my time. (I used to be charged out at £600.00 per diem, not that I got that myself! and when self-employed I used to charge myself out at £250.00 for single day of consultancy) This recent ‘sorting out’ took about six months of lapsed time working by email with one the church officers concerned.

To be entirely honest, I think I no longer have the capability to learn something like a ‘new computer language’ – Superbase’s next incarnation will be a platform independent product using a language called SMPOL; but despite my love of Superbase I have made no attempt to be involved in the testing of this next generation because of the new language, even though it is clearly very similar to languages I have used in the past like Pascal.

Assuming there are no vacancies for Superbase work at the kind of speed and dedication that I am capable of I see more that my abilities could be used in an editorial way, maybe in documentation and in the typing up of specialist papers.