Mick: about
Mick then
Mick now
Well, so how did I get from the left to the right without even trying? The secret, if you want to follow the same trajectory, is: become a teacher. And, if you're thinking that in the right picture I look like a grouchy old bugger, you're absolutely right: teaching has spiritual as well as physical effects.
After a rigorous University of Cambridge training as a dilettante I 'progressed' from teaching French through the gobbledegook of cultural studies to the gobbledegook heaven of Java, SQL, XML and the rest of the alphabet soup of digital media.
Of course to be wholly convincingly obscure in cultural studies one actually had to be French, but I found that being able to speak it still gave me something of an edge in wilful obfuscation. Mind you, nowadays one has to be Slovenian and there's no way I'm going to learn that, so it's just as well I 'moved on'.
Moving on to teaching Java, though, was a bit of a shock after cultural studies, since, gobbledegook though it may be, it actually has to be precise gobbledegook, otherwise nothing works and students are hugely disappointed, whereas in cultural studies, the more imprecise the gobbledegook is, the more impressed they are. Somewhere along the line I actually became a Microsoft Professional and a Sun Certified Java Programmer (I suspect various administrative errors). Certifiable by then, without a doubt, so it's fortunate I stopped teaching when I did.
So, enough already! I live in Cornwall, which is beautiful, so here's Cornwall:
Hmm. Er... well, maybe some bits of Cornwall are more beautiful than others and I suppose glorious Par where I've lived for centuries is not one of those others. Still, it does have the advantage that it's easy enough to get out of, so here are some other local bits:
