Who is this "willy@kilmelford"?
Willy isn't my real name, but you don't need to know what that is. Willy is a nick-name given to me at school which has stuck ever since, and except for immediate family, that's what I get called. Confused? -- try being me!
I was born a long time ago in Hartlepool, Cleveland, when it was West Hartlepool in County Durham! Not sure what that makes me, -- not South enough to be a Yorkshireman, and not North enough to be a Geordie, though I can understand both of them.
I longed to travel and as soon as I could leave grammar school I did so and was lucky enough to get a job with Cable & Wireless Ltd., one of the world's largest telecommunication companies. With their assistance I was able to visit various parts of the world, and lived in Mauritius, Kenya and Zanzibar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Portugal, and the Falkland Islands. I met my first wife in Zanzibar and together we produced four offspring, three boys and a girl, all different nationalities, Kenyan, Uruguayan, English, and Bolivian. However by virtue of their parentage they have British passports, speak English, and are housetrained.
I was employed by C&W for 37 years, and I worked for them for most of that time too, before retiring about eleven years ago. By this time I was into my second marriage, to Rosemary, a Scot from Edinburgh, and I compounded my alienation by emigrating to Kilmelford (where's that?..click here) just before retiring. We had been visiting Kilmelford since 1981, when we bought a boat here and spent all our holidays sailing on the West coast of Scotland. We are now living in a bungalow on the south side of Loch Melfort about a mile outside the village. We are both dog-lovers and we used to have a couple of papillons, Pepe and Melody. (If you really must see us we are here!). Unfortunately they are now in the big dog-kennel in the sky, and due to other commitments we have no plans to replace them.
My main interests are amateur radio and electronics, woodturning and woodworking, music, and in the summer, sailing. The fact that you are reading this will also tell you that I am interested in playing with computers, and I waste many frustrated hours trying to dominate this infuriating machine! I use the PC mainly for graphics and photographic manipulation (digital terrorism as some would say!), writing music, and in conjunction with a radio receiver decoding data signals and orbiting weather satellite signals.
Amateur radio has been my lifelong hobby, and I started as a short-wave listener in the early 1950s. My father bought me an 1155 receiver (ex air force, 1940s vintage) which cost him £10, which at the time was about a week's pay for him, and a hundred years' pocket money for me!! I got my first transmitting licence in Mauritius, VQ8AQ, in 1956, and also VQ8AQR, Rodrigues Island. I got my British callsign in 1959, GM3NUF. By courtesy of my employers who sent me to different parts of the world I have had the priviledge of operating with the following callsigns, DL2BT, VQ4IT, VQ1GDW, CX9AAN, CP1HW, CP6FG, and VP8PM. In Kilmelford we are surrounded by hills so my signals do not get out to the rest of the world very well, but I still maintain an active station, which you can see here. I also have a receiving setup for decoding weather satellites, and general knob-twiddling.
I have always enjoyed working with wood, the lovely smell of clean aromatic wood, and the therapeutic effect of clean shavings curling off a sharp blade. Retirement provided the ideal opportunity to invest in some serious tools which I had been unable to do during my nomadic working life. Hence I have a fairly well equipped workshop with a band saw, a couple of circular saws, a router, a planer/thicknesser, and a Myford ML8 woodturning lathe, plus a fairly comprehensive selection of hand tools. See some of my work here.
I have always enjoyed music, but only in retirement have I devoted time to seriously practising an instrument. Of course I should have done it sixty years ago, and it is now too late in life to do more than amuse myself. I have a Yamaha Clavinova digital piano, a fantastic (literally!) instrument, which is capable of producing sumptuous orchestral sounds, but which I use mainly in Grand Piano mode. I recently took up the accordeon (piano) which is a popular instrument here in Scotland. Favourite music?..it's easier to say what I don't like, and that is anything very modern. Otherwise I like anything that has a 'good tune' from Aavik to Zywny, and Mozart to Madonna. If I have to make a choice I favour keyboard music, particularly Chopin and Scott Joplin, though I am getting into the Celtic stuff, the Irish and Scottish jigs, reels, hornpipes, marches, Strathspeys and slow airs. Favourite artistes?...there are so many but my longest-standing idols (again a keyboard bias) are Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, and George Shearing. Here you see a struggling musico.
My sailing interest goes back a while, and I first learnt to handle a sailing boat when I lived in Rodrigues, a small island in the Indian Ocean, in the mid 1950s. During my nomadic life there have been few opportunities to pursue the pastime, but in 1981 we bought a Nicholson 32, long-keel heavy displacement cruiser, and thereafter spent most of our holidays exploring the West Coast of Scotland. I hope to do a photo feature for this web-site on the anchorages on the West coast sometime in the future. We had "Sanday of Sween" for 18 years, but lately Rosemary has been unable to sail due to her disability caused by MS, so "Sanday" has been sold and she now resides in Dingle, Eire, and has been renamed "Lotos". I now get to sail with friends, on their boats, which is much less expensive!! I also sleep better at nights on board other peoples' boats when the wind is whistling in the rigging. (Perhaps only sailors will appreciate that remark!).
(2003 update, - I believe that "Sanday of Sween" aka "Lotos" has been sold again and if anyone has knowledge of her whereabouts now I would be interested to know).
As much as I enjoyed working, and the opportunities for travel to interesting and different environments, I am enjoying retirement much more! A word of warning...you don't (can't) stop working, you just change your boss! I never seem to have any spare time because I enjoy so much playing with my toys.
More recently I have taken an interest in digital photography, not only taking photos but editing them (artistic distortion!!), and making pictures out of photographs. (I hope). All the pictures in the Album are my own work.
P.S. 2003 update. Rosemary's MS (mentioned above) has now deteriorated to the point where she needs round-the-clock care which keeps me busy doing things that I would perhaps rather not do. However I have learnt to cook and drive a washing machine!!
If you can identify with any of the above, or wish to email me for any reason, click here.