I'm 27 years old and I live in England, which is part of the United Kingdom, I have to be careful to point that out these days otherwise all the Scottish people get hot under the collar. I actually live in a secluded location which, as it happens, is not so very far away from fellow sumfinner, Ironheart. I can't vouch for Mr Iron, Sir, but I've certainly never met the Queen, a question that the admission of being English seems to invoke all too often. I don't live in London either, I freely admit that some English people DO live in London (even lots of other nationalities too) but not all of them do, believe it or not.

I'd describe myself as a student of literature, if I thought I could get away with it. I am by nature a very quiet person but if you do manage to get me talking it might take several hours until I stop again. Sometimes I go to college and write, but mostly I stay at home and don't write. When I'm in the mood for it the writing days far outnumber the not writing days and people who have seen my work even say it's quite good, though I don't believe a word of any possible praise. I fill my spare time with reading, my collection of books puts many a county library to shame, playing computer games - something which makes me curse like a trooper I'm almost ashamed to admit, actually I sometimes swear worse than a trooper - AND, of course, talking or lurking on IRC. Sometimes I might leave IRC long enough to watch a film, I like films very much and have seen and enjoyed far too many to pick out a single favourite, If you pushed me I might pick out 'One flew over the cuckoos nest' but I'd feel very guilty if you made me do that - there are too many good films out there.

As a student of literature (/me tries not to laugh) I might be expected to have a favourite quote and, indeed, I do. My favourite quote flies in the face of controversy and is from quite a recent book rather than a hoary old classic and it goes like this;

'A theory is nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about'.

Harsh words, indeed, but words that made a tremendous impression on me when I first read 'The Lost World' by Michael Crichton. Of course there are lots of other quotes that I like too - I try to rotate them through my IRC quit message - another current favourite is 'Carpe cerevisi!' which, for those (like me) who don't speak Latin, means 'Seize the beer!'

Out of the channels I've looked at during my Internet Chat 30+summfin is my preferred virtual dwelling place, I've met many good people there and I know that anyone reading this who isn't already familiar with the channel will do the same.

I'd like to say that I know next to nothing about HTML but the awful truth of the matter is that my knowledge of hypertext wotsit language stops several hundred miles short of being next to nothing. This is why my page is completely cringeworthy. I just thought I'd try out the old adage that 'any page is better than no page' (yes, the very same old adage that I just made up)