The Pigpen

Welcome to The Pigpen!

Click here for the original Pigpen.

This is the menagerie of Oliver & Naomi Clarke and is the latest reincarnation of the Pigpen BBS (Fidonet 2:250/104 as was back in the mid-1980's - RIP). Actually, what was originally a pigstye lost its porcine character some time around 1991 and after going through a stage of being a mix between a kennel and aquarium is now rapidly turning into stables and an aviary!

The Pigpen is a window into our lives and interests, ranging from caravanning and canals on the one hand, to Contract Bridge, photography and scuba-diving somewhere in the middle, and the Police on the other. The actual menagerie has shrunk in numbers in recent years but some of its number are slightly bigger than previous occupants of The Pigpen. The Koi got left behind when we moved to Urmston from Bury and for the first time since we met, Naomi and I are currently "dog-less". Even one of the parrots has gone and our current non-human occupants number only three: Gus, the African Grey parrot, Midnight, a 15 hand black Dales mare, and Jazz, her foal who was born in May 2007.

I retired from the Police in October 2007 and we've since moved from Urmston to Scotland and the Pigpen is now coming to you from Saltcoats on the Ayrshire coast.

Latest News

Friday 29th August 2008: Videos There's now a Videos page where you can view some of the videos we've uploaded onto YouTube. Mostly horse-related ones (and quite large: 60-90Mb mostly).

Saturday 2nd August 2008: Relocation-Relocation-Relocation We've moved!!! I retired from the Police last October and we've now taken advantage of that to move closer to Naomi's family in Scotland. We're now in Saltcoats on the Ayrshire coast (opposite Arran). It rains here almost more than it did in Manchester, so we feel right at home...

The Stables

We have always been great horse-lovers, though until recently all I had ever done about it was some pony-trecking holidays as a child and an occasional hack out. Naomi, on the other hand, used to loan her sister's horse Kerry Bee back before we met (by all accounts Kerry Bee was a very beautiful but neurotic psychopath, three quarters thoroughbred and one quarter arab). We started out with Murphy and Romeo, but eventually decided that Romeo was "too fast" and that we could really only afford one horse, so they got sold and we acquired Midnight instead.

Midnight is a black Dales cross, an 8-9 year old mare who is a real sweetheart. She is 100% bombproof out hacking and is very laid-back - exactly what Naomi wants. We'd had her for about 6 months when we found out she was in foal!! Jazz was born on 6th May 2007 and is doing very nicely. You can read his own Blog and you can see pictures of all our horses (past and present) on the Horses and Photos pages. More...

The Card Room

Bridge has been one of my abiding passions since an early age. I was taught to play by my father when only an infant and I was instantly addicted. For a number of years I ran the Bury Athenaeum, a Bridge club in Bury and I used to play competitive Bridge about 6 nights a week. In the 1980's I hooked up with Jason Hackett and we developed a fairly complex Precision system together. We played a lot of pairs competitions together and also as a Team of Four with Jason's brother Justin and father Paul. I stopped playing face-to-face Bridge in about 1991 and now play entirely online on Bridgebase.com

The section of The Pigpen that deals with Bridge is mainly a teaching area. I teach Precision Club on BridgeBase Online on Saturday evenings in the Beginner/Intermediate Lounge (BIL). The system I teach is loosely based on what Jason and I used to play with some of the more extreme bits taken out. If you play Bridge but not online as yet, give Bridgebase a look. More...

The Bird Bath

We acquired Gus, our African Grey Parrot, in the mid-1990's, quickly followed by Daisy, a Sulphur-crested cockatoo. When we moved to Urmston in late 2005 we rehomed Daisy because there was no way we would have had room for 2 large parrots. Daisy was great fun, although extremely loud (well she is Australian, I suppose). She was quite well trained and would dance, do somersaults etc on command.

Gus is an absolute joy and regales us with whistled tunes from various soaps and even some Beethoven from time to time. His repertoire of phrases is continually growing ("Woof woof - I can bark. Can you fly?" is a favourite, for example). Gus has his large cage just inside the front door so he greets most visitors with a polite request as to whether they would like to partake of some liquid refreshment (Ok, he says "Wanna brew?"). We've been trying to teach him to say "Welcome Home" at this point for some time, but thus far without success. More...

Underwater

Naomi and I have always been keen on snorkelling. More recently we have taken up scuba-diving and most of our recent holidays have been with that in mind. Scuba is more of a challenge for us than you might expect since I am a Type 2 diabetic and Naomi is disabled with chronic asthma.

Despite these disadvantages, we have managed a fair number of dives now, mostly either at Stay Wet, Agia Pelagia on Crete, or at Dive Tenerife on the Costa de Silencio on Tenerife. Both of these dive centres are completely different to one another and we really enjoy both of them. We currently limit ourselves to fairly shallow dives up to about 10-12 metres, but I am determined to do a PADI Open Water classification in due course. Since photography is one of my main hobbies, underwater photography is something I particularly enjoy and we already have some nice pictures. More...

The Police

I joined Greater Manchester Police in October 1977 and was promoted to Sergeant in 1987. I am currently working on the logistics for the coming Labour Party Annual Conference in Manchester in 2006, but have had a fairly varied career in the Police over the past 28½ years, but in recent years mostly related to IT Systems of one sort or another, Communications and Resource Management. I retired from GMP in October 2007. More...

Photography

Photography has always been a passion of mine. The tools have changed over the years and I've moved from using a Bronica 2¼, to an Olympus OM2n to Minolta Dynax and then more recently to my current beast, a Nikon D100. My particular interests in photography are animals and birds, landscapes and architecture. More recently we've also got into digital video and some of our clips can also be accessed from this site. More...

The Pigpen Guest User

Welcome!!