About Me
If life is a journey, then it’s been an interesting trip so far. I’ve done all kinds of things, including being an expert in public finance, running my own consultancy business, playwriting and singing and acting on the Edinburgh fringe.
Aged forty-seven my partner Sue and I sold up in the UK and set sail for parts unknown. We sailed around the Mediterranean for a couple of wonderful years and then settled in Puglia (the heel of Italy’s boot), where we bought a house and an olive grove and were taught about life, food and subsistence farming by our generous neighbours.
While based in Italy we went to Sarawak in Borneo for five years, where Sue mentored primary school teachers on the shores of the South China Sea, and I taught English to local children.
In 2015 I trained as a humanist celebrant, splitting my time between leading ceremonies in England and Italy, before we sold our house in Italy and moved to Newark in Nottinghamshire in 2019. Since then, I’ve been increasingly active as a humanist celebrant and mentor to new celebrants and am also now a member of Humanists UK’s training team and a non-religious chaplain at Beaumond House, our brilliant local hospice. Hospices are hugely reliant on public donations which is why you’ll find a “donate” button for Beaumond House at the foot of each page on this site – please give if you can!
Outside of celebrancy, I love to travel, eat, drink and socialise. I’m also a keen sailor, motorcycle and scooter rider and the owner of rescue Pomeranian who shows no gratitude whatsoever.
Many celebrants specialise in weddings or funerals, but I lead ceremonies in all of the major life events – birth, union and death – ‘the rites of passage’– because they’re all connected to each other, and each is part of our story. That’s what I love about this work – meeting people, making connections and telling their stories.
My logo is about connections – it’s from a design painted on one of Puglia’s distinctive ‘trullo’ houses. Many trullo cones are painted with symbols, this one perhaps represents the sun, the giver of life, but no one really knows. For me it’s a connection to a place I love, which also speaks to the power of symbols – and to the circular nature of life itself.
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