I was born in South Wales, many of my forebears being colliers. After graduating in Natural Science (mostly Geology) at Durham University, my work in the oil & gas drilling industry took me to many locations in Europe, Africa and Asia but I settled close to where the industry had its roots in the UK, on the North Sea coast of England. That is where I still live with my family, in a village in Norfolk about as far as you can get, within the UK, from any mineral-bearing rocks. I've been working as a Directional Driller offshore Norway and Denmark since 2004, when I returned from an assignment in the South China Sea offshore Brunei.
I've been collecting minerals, purely for the fun of collecting, since I was a lad although lately I have been buying a few specimens from localities which are no longer accessible. As a result of taking home representative samples from every locality I've visited (ask my wife!) I have a shed full of mediocre to poor material from all over the UK. Jesse Fisher of UKMiningVentures, Rogerley says I belong to a class of typically British collectors who'd 'rather crawl 5 miles across a peat bog in the snow on Christmas Eve than part with £5 to buy a specimen'. I am rather proud of this accolade, though I'd much prefer to be collecting in 'drive-in' localities (which are now very few and far between) and I have enjoyed 'collecting-and-paying-for-it' at places such as Rogerley (where I'm in constant fear of damaging something which could have been sold at Tucson for a month's wages) and Florence (now, sadly, flooded).
I've been collecting for long enough to have found some good stuff as well, especially from Northern England and South Wales. Most of the pictures I have on Mindat, and I apologise for the poor quaility of many of them, are not necessarily of my best material, but more often of previously unrepresented localities or unrepresented species from a particular locality.
Like everybody else, I lament the fact that I started collecting at least 30 years, and probably more like 100 years, too late! I didn't start venturing underground until the late 1980's - if only I'd been doing that even 10 years earlier; if only I lived in Weardale; if only I lived in West Cumbria; if only..... If only I lived in Hesket Newmarket, I'd probably have turned up my toes through Old Carrock Strong Ale poisoning by now (like 'Blott', Jim and Liz's dog at the Old Crown - anyone remember him?).