About me...
I'm a 60 year old bloke, living in an old cottage in the Shetland Isles which I share with my artist wife Kate and our various pets
- Twist - a 13 year old male Bedlington Terrier
- Moth - a 4 year old female collie/lurcher cross
- George - a 2 year old female cat
- George was one of a brother and sister pair Gilbert and George 1 but sadly Gilbert was killed on the road a few months ago and is a great loss.
I've worked in TV & Radio Transmitter engineering since 1988 after leaving UMIST - firstly with the BBC and then after privatization in 1997 the company changed hands several times (the job remained the same throughout) I left to go freelance in 2012. I still do my old job, but as a contractor, not an employee.
Work moved us to Wick, in the far north of Scotland in 1995 and then to Shetland in 1999, where I've been ever since. Is it really coming up to 27 years since we moved to Shetland?!
I've played with radio and electronics all my life - got my amateur radio licence in 1983 when I was 17 years old. Recently I've come to the conclusion that I'm finished with radio as a hobby. It's no longer a source of enjoyment.
I also mess about with Linux and other computery things and even a bit of coding in Python and C (and a short dip into 6502 assembler) as a very rank amateur.
I've tried playing various musical instruments over the years - guitar, mandolin, bodhran, penny whistle, button accordion (melodeon). I still noodle about on a guitar from time to time, and play some folk tunes on the mandolin. I had a plan to learn the recorder recently (I played descant recorder badly as a kid, aged 8 or so) and bought one, but it's sitting unplayed. Perhaps this year of becoming 60 will spark me into giving it a go?
I've been a runner and done triathlons etc. but in 2013 had a badly ruptured disc, and that limited my running for a few years. Then in 2018 I had a heart attack.... and recovered... which was followed swiftly by developing Rheumatiod Arthritis. Treatment for this is still in a state of flux as I'm tried on one medication after another trying to find one that works.
I don't run any more. In periods when my RA is relatively well-controlled (usually after an intramuscular steroid injection) I can get back on my bike and put some gentle miles in, but these periods are few and far between. I try to swim every week, but even that's a bit hit & miss. At least I've got the dogs to walk most days on the vast open hill surrounding the cottage.
I gave up drink in 2021 after my health conditions and medication gave me the excuse to stop 2. I find life without drink, and without thinking about drink, to be so much easier. For practical reasons and psychological reasons. It's just a win win
This blog
I'm starting blogging again after having a few other short-lived blogs over the years, as an outlet for my interest in documenting life 3. I keep a daily diary - writing and sketching about my day, every day in a real, paper journal - but I want to do something visible too. I enjoy dipping into other peoples' blogs and often find the odd thing that resonates, or helps me. Perhaps someone might stumble on this blog and find a tiny nugget of value.
The name Make It Tea comes from the blog I kept in 2016 when I was first considering quitting drinking.
"What're you drinking?"
"Make it tea, please"
I like it as a title, so I've carried it on for my new blogging adventure in 2026