Paul's Page
I came up with the idea of Bearne.com as a way of forming a web community, bringing together Bearnes from around the world. I never cease to be amazed and delighted at the gradually increasing number of Bearne-family-strands that begin to connect through the site.
Back at the beginning, the site also initially gave me, and my partner Gina, a vehicle through which to develop our web skills and play with new technologies. What neither of us bargained for was the amount of work involved!
I
am in my forties, 6'3", with untamed curly brown hair and brown eyes. We live just
outside Swindon
in 'Doolally House'. Coined during a no more
than normally mad family Saturday, the name was deemed apt by friends
and family and has stuck.
I've
been lucky enough to do jobs I've enjoyed, even if they haven't made my
fortune (yet). I started out as gopher for a corporate TV production company,
moving on to an event/exhibition company working with high tensile tents
at events ranging from the Royal Welsh Show and Hampton Court
Flower Show to the Cannes Film Festival. During this time,
I also set up a sound and lighting company and eventually turned this
from a hobby to a full-time business. Great fun though this was, there
came an inevitable realisation that this was not a job from which I could
retire to a life of luxury. Nor would either the equipment or myself have
lasted indefinitely!
So I turned to another hobby for inspiration and pursued my first computer support job, starting work as a Field Engineer in 1995. After three years working for ICL at Raychem (now Tyco Electronics), I jumped the fence in the autumn of 2000 and continue work for Tyco as a Web Applications Designer (yet another hobby-to-job transition!).
Other interests include travelling, walking, photography, film, reading (particularly science fiction) - and, of course, the web.
I
am also Chairperson for the New
Mechanics Institution Preservation Trust, a group who are seeking
to preserve a building at the heart of Swindon's railway heritage and
return it to community use. My mother's family came from Swindon and many
of them worked for GWR (Great Western Railways), so this draws together
the threads of my ancestry and an ongoing involvement in the local community
dating back to my scouting days.
[Last updated 28 February 2005]