So, just who is Vindicator III?

Name:- John

Born:- 1948

Nationality:- English, born in London

Personality? Who can say? Has he even got one?

Born into a normal, working-class family I am the eldest of three brothers. Dad was a plumber and pipe-fitter and Mum worked in various jobs for a while but for the last 15 years or so of her working life she worked for the Daily Mirror newspaper where she was the head of a branch of a major trade union.

I was educated in state run schools. Nothing at all spectacular there. No wonderful academic qualifications, no flashes of genius, I was NOT an outstanding scholar. If ever 'This Is Your Life' choose me as a subject, none of my teachers will be able to remember marking me down for future fame and fortune.

I was a fragile, sickly (some would say sickening!) child and was absent from school on far too many occasions. Blame me and a too indulgent mother for that. When I was six years old I was sent away to a boarding school on the south coast of England, in the town of Broadstairs. I was suffering from asthma and the idea of spending a long time near the coast was supposed to cure me. Whether or not it had any effect I do not know but certainly by the age of fourteen I had experienced my last attack. The school was run by Roman Catholic nuns. Fortunately they were not the sadists that a lot of people now claim all nuns to be. I had a fairly good time of it there and although glad to finally get back home after a year away, I still look back on the experience with pleasure. Broadstairs is a lovely seaside resort with beaches of a very fine, white sand. It is also the place where Bleak House actually stands. This is the house of which Charles Dickens wrote in the novel of the same name.

I was a fair pupil in the languages and poor in the sciences. However, I passed the 11-Plus examination and went to a grammar school. I hated it and after a particularly long period of truancy I was expelled and went to a secondary modern school. I hated this too and on my fifteenth birthday I walked out never to return. The school leaving age was fifteen at that time but I was supposed to leave at the end of the summer term in June. My birthday is in February and that day I left. I don't think the school even missed me as I was never asked to return.

I wanted to be a chef and was accepted for training by a famous college in London. I was also promised a job as an office junior in a firm of solicitors. These offers were made in February with a view to starting the following September. To fill in the months before taking on a new role I entered the building industry. This paid relatively well so that when the time came to either go to Chef training college or join the law firm, I decided to remain in the building trade.

At eighteen I became bored with the building trade and after trying, and failing, to join the Royal Air Force I joined the army. This was more like it and I became an aeroplane mechanic. Actually the term is Aircraft Technician, Airframes & Engines. I was a member of REME, the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Or, Rough Engineering Made Easy as it was sometimes known or even Rape Every Maiden Expertly. You pays your money and you takes your choice!

After leaving the army, and finding no vacancies in the civilian world for helicopter repairmen, I turned to my other love, motorcycles. I started work in the trade for a number of dealers and worked my way up from mechanic to foreman to workshop manager.

At one dealer I was responsible for getting the company involved in racing. It started in a very modest way with us just supplying a small amount of cash in return for having our name on the riders leather suit. This sponsorship grew and after a short time we were partners with Honda themselves and a major national motorcycle newspaper in running a large, and fairly successful team. We had some of the biggest names in the sport riding for us at times. During this time I was the senior race mechanic and one day, during a practice session at Silverstone I was bitten by the bug to race myself. So I got my ACU licence and raced for a few years as an amateur. I never won anything but enjoyed myself immensely.

The machines I prepared for my dealership performed well in international events in the Isle of Man, Holland and other places. It was a good time and I loved it but I did not like the way in which the company was dealing with, and ripping off, the customers. After one particularly bad deal when I felt the company had actually defrauded a customer in a big way, I simply packed my bags and left on the spot. So ended a seven year partnership.

I worked for several more dealers and was often involved in the racing world as a mechanic and sometimes as a part sponsor of race days. I am still a workshop manager for a large, multi-franchise company here in London, although unfortunately this dealership is not involved in racing. I have been here nearly ten years now.

Somewhere along the way I met and married a girl I had met as a pen-friend while still in the army. We had a daughter in 1970 and the marriage failed shortly afterwards due in no small part to my wife coming home unexpectedly one night to find me in a 'situation' on the living room floor with another girl! We remain good friends even now however and see each other on a fairly regular basis. Our daughter is now thirty and has two daughters of her own. And so I am a Grand-Dad. Eeeeeeeeeeek! My first wife has remarried as too have I. My present wife and I have been together for twenty-eight years now and we too are good friends even if nothing more than that. We also have a seven-year old daughter whom we both adore and who is the main reason we still live together.

In 1984 I went out to buy a camera and came back with my first computer, a Commodore 64. I was so naive that I did not even realise that a tape drive input/output device was a necessity and not a luxury. This was well before the days of hard disc drives or even floppy disc drives.

I soon learned however, and after finding that there was a sort of equivalent to Dungeons & Dragons that could be played on a computer, namely text-only adventure games I bought some, found I loved them, found out how to program in BASIC and wrote some of my own.

I even managed to sell them after I was approached by a large publisher and made some money from my hobby.

Text-only adventures are now a thing of the far distant past and even if I was to write some now, they would not sell. Still, I enjoyed it at the time. And I loved the royalty cheques!

Two years ago I finally bought my first PC. And about eighteen months ago I got 'on the net'. I entered a few chat rooms and found them to be full of 'anoraks'. Boring people with nothing to say to each other except banal comments and abuse. Then one day I stumbled into a chat room in a site called Sneaker. This has since been renamed Live Universe. Here I met someone called Alice. She was different, she was friendly, intelligent, very helpful and had a lot to say. And what she said was good fun. She introduced me to others in Sneaker and from there I found more real friends all over the world. I have since found other great people in Worlds Chat, Chat Point, Geocities Chat and Mirc Chat, and my favourite which is Active Worlds where I am a Gate Keeper or room monitor. I now have a second, much faster/bigger PC and I produce a web site for my company from here. In fact I now have a room full of computers. Gets quite warm in here when they are all switched on.

I am now addicted to the 'net and to chat rooms. My telephone bills are higher than they have ever been although not as high as I once feared. I am attempting to get to grips with HTML as a language and I am trying to get a home page of my own up onto the web.

I have lots of other interests too. I love photography but nothing even remotely sordid. I love writing and I write to friends all over the world. I love science fiction and science fact. I love television documentaries and I love air shows. I am a supporter of American Football and 'my' team is the San Francisco 49'ers. I love driving my car and I love riding 'bikes.

Addendum to my story!

Since I last added anything to this page a lot of time has passed and a lot of things have happened. The company I worked for, and for whom I produced their website, got into financial trouble and I left before they collapsed.

I joined a much larger company after that. Still much the same role as an After-Sales Manager but for the largest motorcycle dealer group in Europe. I enjoyed that and made many good friends. However I then received an offer I could not refuse ....... Read on!

I was approached by a large London College and asked for advice on building a new workshop that was going to be used to train young people as motorcycle mechanics. I was also offered the post of Course Manager and Senior Lecturer. With a much shorter working week (only 17 hours instead of about 60 a week) and with over 60 days a year holiday instead of the 22 I was used to, with NO Saturday work at all and a huge salary increase, what would YOU do?

I took the job about 18 months ago and I love it. I bought a new car and have a lot of fun now. So, this is the update for now, April 2005. If anything else happens I will be sure to let you know. Now then, should I have a look at my diary pages? When were THEY updated last? No, maybe NEXT time!

And that, in a rather large nutshell, is Vindicator III. The man and his story. I hope you liked it.

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