I became fascinated by astronomy and gazing at the stars when I was a teenager still at school. When I was 14 I desperately wanted to learn the constellations and to be able to name the brighter stars and identify the planets when visible. Out came an old copy of "The Daily Telegraph Map of The Night Sky" and I was hooked. My first 'department store' type telescope wasn't much good, so my parents bought me a 4-1/2 inch reflector telescope from Astro-Systems in Luton and it was perfect for what I wanted to see. Later on, after leaving school, I went to work for Astro-Systems making the telescopes and I saved up to acquire a 10 inch equatorial Newtonian. Unfortuntely I was made redundant when the guy running the business went to work in America for a new life and more money.

In 1985/6 I participated in The International Halley Watch, organised by NASA in the United States. This was a joint amateur/professional collaboration project to study and observe Halley's Comet in conjunction with the fleet of international spacecraft being sent out to intercept it. I used my trusty 4-1/2 transportable telescope to make drawings and as a mount to take many guided photographs, the best ones of which were sent off for inclusion in an archive at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena.

With the ever worsening spread of the scourge of light pollution, I became more and more dissatified with how little I could see from within my home town of Stevenage, both with the naked eye and with a telescope. When the spectacular Comet Hale-Bopp came and caught great public and media attention, I took my 4-1/2 inch telescope out to the countryside to try and get a better view and take photoraphs. Later I bought an 80mm Celestron spotting scope and tripod to take out of town to country pubs, where I could eat and drink and do astronomy in the same place and where the aren't so many bright lights around. This was soon followed by the purchase of an excellent 12 inch Revelation Dobsonian telescope, which I can just about load into the car to take to dark sky locations such as the Skycamp at Kelling Heath and for society star parties at Standalone Farm.