1. When and why did you take up your instrument? What keeps you playing?
Aged 9, when I started Middle School, I started to learn to play the trumpet. I got to a resonable standard, played in the school orchestra and a school musical Sweetness in the Air, however by the time I was aged 15 I wasn’t getting any better, and I was more interested in writing, so I gave up, and the trumpet was sold.

Throughout my time at uni, I kind of regretted not playing something, but didn’t do anything about it. I had this idea I wanted to play the flute – I’m not sure why – but in for Christmas 1996, when stuck for a present for me, and chancing on a second hand one from a colleague, my parents bought me one. I was temping at the time and couldn’t afford lessons so taught myself. In the summer of 2000 after getting my permanent job, and falling in with the *musical crowd* at work, I found a flute teacher (who has been doing her best, and with some success, to teach me out of the bad mistakes I picked up myself) and joined a couple of bands.

What keeps me playing? I want to improve sufficiently to play well in band. I enjoy, playing music with others in the relaxed atmosphere of an amateur band. I don’t have any plans to take grade exams, I just want to be able to play!

2. What achievement are you most proud of?
I think this is the hardest question you’ve set me. I’m not sure if there is one thing that I’m most proud of. I’m quite a modest person really, so thinking about this, I worry that it will sound like I’m boasting. Hrmm, achievements… maybe, that I haven’t just talked of being a writer. I have finished a 220 page novel, the first season of a tv series, a couple of films, some poetry, some short stories. My greatest achievement hasn’t happened yet (but it will): to be published.

3. Do you see yourself as an adult? What does that mean to you?
Yes. I think so. I’m quite innocent, and trusting, idealistic and optimistic – traits I guess that often associated with childhood, but I’m also responsible and assiduous, and reliable. I think being an adult means being responsible for yourself, but at the same time you shouldn’t feel that you can’t turn to friends and family when you need help.

4. What did you want to do when you were 8? What do you want to do now?
So many things…
A writer of course! But I also remember wanting to be a Vet (didn’t everyone who watched All Creatures Great and Small?) until I realised how intelligent you needed to be, a BBC cameraman, the guy who put the graphics on the weather charts or those illustrated maps on the news(?!!). A writer, director, producer though mainly…

5. What’s your essential purchase of 2004 going to be?
That’s easy. A laptop plus Lacie 200Gb USB Hard drive (or similar). Reason? As anyone to have witnessed my outpourings of grief in these pages or on IM will know, my four and a half year old desktop is on it’s last legs. I need a newer, more powerful, more stable computer, and I also need to downsize my desktop for a nice neat laptop to, a) save space, and b) allow mobile creativity.

Of course if anyone has any suggestions of what kind of laptop to buy (I’m thinking of PC) – but if you can convince me to go iBook – then you can try. As part of the package when I buy this will be a wireless router to go with my Broadband, and if this years bonus allows, I may be tempted by an iRiver, like yourself – convince me. As to when I buy my computer, as soon as possible, but it will be when the two businesses who want me to design their website, let me know what they want so that I can do it, and then pay me…

You want to be interviewed? You know the drill by now … or do you want to ask me some?

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