Having had three of the best years ever in Newcastle, I travelled to Edinburgh to be with my girlfriend, Sarah, who I met at a University level 6 disco in January, 1978!!
Not long after, I got a job with Noel Collins, who was a member of the Collins publishing family. He was writing and publishing a travel guide to Edinburgh and I was employed as his graphic designer. The job also involved visiting various pubs, clubs and restaurants to try them out in order to include them in the guide. What a jobthat was!
I later moved to a design agency called Harrison Cowley where I worked on a wide variety of projects. Probably my most successful was for Alloa Brewery which wanted to jump on the real ale bandwagon. They liked my designs for their beers called Alloa Light and Alloa Pale which then appeared on beer fonts, mats and bar towels in most bars in Scotland which was the peak of my graphics career!!
I fell out of love with graphics due to the conveyer belt nature of the job with the agency and walked out one day into a cold but sunny Edinburgh winter's day with a city centre view across the river Forth to the hills of Fife. I felt a great sense of relief!
Anyway, Sarah and I, having married in 1983, wanted to buy a property and so, I had to get a job to secure a mortgage. I saw an advert in the Scotsman newspaper recruiting for Lothian and Borders Police and in November, 1983 I started a 31 year journey that I still can't really believe I was part of. Over that period, I rose to the dizzy heights of inspector and certainly experienced many challenging situations that I wouldn't have experienced had I remained in graphics!!
Having said that, during my time in the police, my arty side came in handy as I was often commissioned to produce caricatures of retiring chief officers and maintained a sideline in dog portraits!! I was also employed by Strathclyde police on one occasion to sit with a witness in a murder case and produce a drawing of the suspect. The sketch appeared on Crimewatch UK and in national newspapers but I'm not sure how good it was because I'm not sure the murderer was ever tracked down!!
I retired from the police in 2014 but still draw dog portraits and have appeared as an extra in a number of things including Outlander and Fast and Furious!!
Sarah and I have two children, Tom, 37, who is an architect and Hannah , 33, who works in Marketing and is married with a two year old son.
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