Here are 550 words about me. That’s 39,500 fewer than would be available for your Wordportrait.

 
I’m born in Cardiff and spend my teenage years in the Midlands. I go fishing whenever I can, until one day I discover a more urgent interest. At 18 I swear undying allegiance to Julie and head north to Lancaster University to study English. Three years later, Julie is engaged to a pilot and I am collecting a degree in Political Science from the outstretched hand of a smiling Princess Alexandra. Along the way, I’ve been News Editor of the student newspaper, made a lot of friends, and spent a lot of money in Furness College bar.

After graduation, I train to be a shipbroker in London. Later, I work for three years as a news reporter and features writer with The Derbyshire Times Newspaper Group, earning my National Union of Journalists card along the way.

I spend four years travelling and working abroad, in the Middle East, elsewhere in Asia, and Europe. During this time I write my first novel: Before the Ayatollah, set in Teheran and northern India. It’s unpublished, and unpublishable, but still close to my heart.

In Teheran I begin my career as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, before moving to Barcelona, where I live and work for two years at the beginning of the 80’s. Newly married, I return to Mrs Thatcher’s Britain and with the help of my wife Rosa I set up Lexis, a private language school based in Worcestershire. Our two daughters are born in quick succession. Fast forward more than a decade, to 1997, and Lexis is incorporated into one of the biggest colleges of further education in the UK – Dudley College. I stay on as Manager of the Lexis Centre as it becomes known, and oversee its accreditation by the British Council. During this period I travel widely for work in Asia, Europe, and South America.

Fast forward again, to 2004. With our daughters now grown up and no longer living at home, Rosa and I opt for change. She quits her job, I quit mine, and we come to live permanently here in Catalunya.

We buy a house in Les Gavarres, near Santa Cristina D’Aro, in Girona County. From our rear terrace we enjoy sweeping views across tree-covered slopes to Romanya de la Selva, where Mercè Rodoreda had her last home. From time to time we are visited by our daughters, now making their own way in the world.

I write - novels, poetry and short stories. I start teaching classes at the University of Girona. I prepare research papers for publication in academic journals, and set up Wordportraits.

I read a lot, too, about what other writers have to say about the art of story telling. Here is something that caught my eye recently, some words of the great Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe:

“Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people … have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey through the world.”

I think this tells a great truth. Consciously or otherwise, we all try – in whatever way we can - to consolidate the gains we imagine we have made in our existing journey through the world. If I ever write my own Wordportrait, this will be my reason for doing so.