About Me

Based in Brighton and Chichester, I am a writer, journalist, and sub-editor for a variety of publications, working both freelance and in house, and also have over ten years' experience in the publishing industry. I enjoy working in any role that is related to the written word, whether commissioning books and articles, writing or editing content, or publishing and disseminating the finished product. 

Below is an alternative (somewhat daft) form of my CV. If you'd like to see my official CV, or would like any further information at all, please don't hesitate to get in touch. 


CV (sort of)

In the hope of meeting with your approbation,
Please consider this, my humble application.
Here follows a snapshot of my relevant history,
Beginning with statistics, that lexicological mystery. 

Publishing books on this topic most complex,
I met many an author with astonishing prospects,
The outcome of which confirmed my suspicion:
It takes a unique person to be a statistician. 

Polite and friendly, but it would soon get worse
When, pleasantries over, we’d try to converse.
My brain would feel like it’s shoved in reverse
As any sense to their words began to disperse.

As my eyes would begin to glaze over, vacantly,
I’d feel myself daydreaming rather too blatantly.
But with the terms they use, I don’t think I’m to blame,
They’d bamboozle anyone just the same:

Gaussian queues and heavy-tailed distributions
Are enough to give anyone weak constitutions.
Just as skewness and leptokurtosis
Could bring on a whole new type of neurosis.

“Robust compositional heterogeneity!”
They deliver it with such gusto and gaiety.
Ergodicity, asymptotics, non-inferiority trials,
MATLAB, WinBUGS – the list goes on for miles.

Autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity,
Bioequivalence and deterministic stochasticity,
Nonresponse in longitudinal methodologies –
If I’m boring you senseless, a thousand apologies.

MCMC, ODEs, S Plus and R,
Levy processes, microarrays, blah-de-blah-blah…
Fuzzy sets, data mining, collinear regression,
It’s enough to drive anyone into depression!

So I moved to Sydney and coached squash for a while,
But deep down I was always a bibliophile,
And I returned to England, to publishing and writing,
Now working in science that was just south of exciting.

Once again, I was dealing in an unknown vernacular
Whose ability to flummox was simply spectacular.
But just as before, I learnt what, where and who,
And I enjoyed the challenge of something new.

So I became familiar with the scientists’ ways,
Their talk of pyrethroids and chemical assays.
Of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and pesticides,
And of a dozen more “cides” besides!

At conferences my brain would no longer explode
When the lecturer waxed lyrically about nematodes,
And I was able to write about entomophagous diets
Without causing too much scientific disquiet.

But my interests didn’t lie in defoliation,
Enzymatic hydrolysis or point mutation.
So I stepped away from agricultural micrology
And read for a masters in environmental psychology.

I’ve since focussed more on the written word,
Truer to my closeted pedantic nerd,
And I write about anything from politics to sports,
From music and comedy to food of all sorts.

Opinion pieces, features, and current affairs,
Book reviews, new shops that are flogging their wares:
For even the driest of subjects, I do like to think,
I can make more engaging when laid out in ink.

A second role I perform to deter any creditors
Is working prolifically as a sub-editor.
From newspapers, and journals, and magazines,
And industrial pamphlets hocking specialist machines,

To brochures for sports centres and personal trainers -
As yet (or, so far…), I’ve had no complainers.
And there’s my career, laid out in verse form,
(Or the good bits at least, I’ve removed all the scorn!)

Ever since I was little, or so I have heard,
I was somewhat obsessed with the written word.
My career, in the main, has reflected that passion
And I look forward to carrying on in that fashion.