No, I'm not the yachtsman from Massachusetts, USA!.. I hope you're not too disappointed.

I was born on January 27th 1957 in St Bartholomew's Hospital, in the City of London, a few hundred yards from St Paul's Cathedral, which officially makes me cockney, but having lived not far from King's Cross Station, in my grandparents' railway house in Pentonville, for the first two years of my life, my parents moved to Billericay, in Essex, in the great post-war London overspill into the county to the east of London, and north of the Thames. Here I grew up.

The next most momentous event to my birth was my second birth, on September 10th 1967, when, in a small (now demolished) non-conformist chapel in South Green, where I lived, I gave my life to Jesus Christ. From that time, Jesus became the closest friend and the Managing Director of my life.

I won a county scholarship in 1968 to Brentwood School, and studied there until 1974. It was during this period that I felt God's call clearly upon my life to serve Him in ministry; at an Easter Monday Good News Crusade convention in Ipswich, 1972, the Lord spoke to me through the preaching of the late Arthur Wallis, to give myself to Him for His service. This I determined to do.

In 1975, after a year working in the Civil Service Department, a stone's throw from Trafalgar Square in London, I moved north to the other capital city which has figured greatly in my life; the Scottish city of Edinburgh. Here, from 1975 to 1979, I studied for a Bachelor of Divinity at New College, the Theology faculty of the University of Edinburgh. During this period, I was going regularly to the Pentecostal church which was in 1979 to leave its denominational affiliation to become Edinburgh City Fellowship.

From 1979 to 1990, I was employed again in government service, this time as an executive officer in the Department of Health and Social Security. During that time, I was able to get to know the real Edinburgh, beyond the halls of academe, spending time visiting needy people across the city, and out into surrounding West and Mid-Lothian. Also, I was serving in Edinburgh City Fellowship as, first a housegroup leader, later as a congregational leader, and, eventually, as an Elder, the Fellowship's equivalent of a Minister; initially this was part-time, but since 1990, I was full-time in the service of the Fellowship, and now continue with its successor, Community Church Edinburgh .

In 1983 I married my lovely wife Ann, and we now have three children; we live in a modern house in the pleasant south Edinburgh suburb of Nether Liberton, an old village which dates back at least to the times of King David of Scotland in the 12th century. This view of it was taken about a century ago, when the cable trams terminated at Good's Corner (our house was built on the field beyond the corner!)