I have had four loves in my life and this book has concentrated on the very first, technical theatre, and my love of building one off gadgets for a specific purpose to solve a problem or mostly to save time, a thing we are always short off. I think I improved all the theatres that I worked in. I enjoyed improving the Royalty the most as we had the smallest crew and the least money. I did the most in the Lyric, after all I was there the longest, and was at the peak of my career then. I had learnt the most and had the longest time to apply it.
In the last ten years I worked purely on the technical side I was a very lucky guy. I was doing what I liked best across ten great London Theatres, from the tiny to the enormous. I worked mainly alone and got to go home each evening to the greatest friend a man could wish for.
The second and third loves of my life were my two wives, and the fourth was a little long haired long legged Jack Russel Terrier called Maggie. She came to us from the Appledown rescue centre in Bedfordshire not far from where I had settled down to live with my second wife Rachel. We first met her on the 5th day of May 2011. She passed from this life 11 years to the day that we had first met her, at our home in instow, at 5.30 in the morning. She had the kindest and gentlest of little hearts.
The first three gave me love, happiness, and companionship, and the last all the love she had.
I spent from the November 2001 until the summer of 2002 intalling the rest of the Telephone systems that had defeated the Chief Electricians and the IT dept of the group. It was what had got me the Job and the finishing of this project secured my position. There was only one minor problem of this system, it was crap, oh boy was it crap.
We went down to Bristol to learn about it. David Myself and Ian from the Victoria Palace who was now Chief LX at the Cambridge. The theatre that had been chosen for the first Insterlation of this new telephone system.