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A Bit about Naomi

Childhood
Naomi's a Londoner originally, like me but when she was an infant her parents moved to Scotland and she was brought up in Ayrshire. When she and I first met, her parents were living in a lovely house in Largs on the Ayrshire coast from which they got lovely views of Cumbrae. Naomi has always been completely into animals and pets and she had worked for a while at Kennels and even a safari park as a teenager. It's always been something of a battle to keep our menagerie within sensible limits. At one point we had 3 dogs, a cat, a number of budgies, 2 parrots, 2 large (6'x2'x2') fishtanks, a cat and a pond full of Koi in the back garden - oh, and I forgot the hamsters and the stick-insects! LOL. She's always been brilliant with animals (and with kids, too).

Narrowboat Art
When we met my family still had our 50' narrowboat, Rambling Rose. Naomi quickly found an affinity for narrowboat art and learned the techniques necessary to produce this very colourful stylised form of painting. Our house is still decorated with some of her best pieces and she painted some interior panels for one of the trip boats that operate around Manchester on the Bridgewater Canal. Arts and crafts is an itch she occasionally has to scratch and she's become proficient at quite a few different things over the years.

Dog Obedience
Animals are always her main interest, though, and with Zoe, our second standard poodle Naomi threw herself into competitive dog obedience. Doing this with a poodle is not the easiest thing because they are quite aloof and not as eager to please as some other breeds like border collies. In the end Naomi's asthma limited how much she could do, but it's a fascinating and very rewarding hobby. Unfortunately Zoe got killed a couple of years ago (she was chased out of the park by a pair of bull mastiffs and was hit by a car) and for the first time ever there is no dog gracing our settee or welcoming visitors.

Horses
Horses are another animal with whom Naomi has always been in love. For a while (before we met) she loaned her sister's horse and we've been riding a few times over the years. Recently, though, the time seemed right to scratch that particular itch and we bought Murphy, a wonderful 17 hand Irish sports horse. Murphy was a tad on the big side for Naomi (but perfect for me!!) and so the sexy Romeo came into our lives a [very] short time later. Romeo is a Chestnut Belgian Warmblood gelding , 16 hands tall and a Grade C showjumper. He is definitely king of the hill [well he thinks so, anyway] at the stables in Urmston where we keep both of the boys. We actually moved house last year to be closer to them.

Scuba Diving
Naomi has her ups and downs. In recent years she's suffered from bouts of severe depression to add from the poor general health that has always been her lot, but she keeps battling on. Besides horse-riding she has also done quite a few dives in Crete and Tenerife. Her asthma limits what she can safely do but we have some priceless pictures of her playing with octopuses etc even if she has to stay above a depth of about 10 metres.

Our Home

When Naomi and I first met I was still living in a 2-bedroomed flat in Ramsbottom in which I'd lived since 1982. Once we had 3 dogs and two 6' fish tanks in there, however, it was clear that it was going to be a bit cramped and we ended up on Rochdale Road, in Bury, in a lovely Victorian terraced house that we poured our soul into a bit. It had a lot of original features already (ceiling roses and plaster coving, not to mention an original mosaic-tiled hall. We decorated it to a really good standard and in keeping with the character of the house. The only bit that was unashamedly modern was the bathroom, which ended up with a double-sized bath and a custom-built shower. The only real problems with that house were the lack of a garage, problems with parking on the main road in front and the lack of a decent-sized garden.

I resisted pressure from Naomi to move, given the amount of time, effort and money we'd sunk into it, but in the end what prompted our move was the horses. Spending 3 hours a day (not to mention about £60 a week) travelling around the M60 from Bury to the stables in Urmston was becoming too much and in late 2005 we moved to our current home in Urmston, 5 minutes from the stables and only 10 minutes from work for me. It's quite a bit smaller that our previous house and lacks the character of our Bury house, but the kitchen is "to die for" and the convenience of being close to work and the stables more than makes up for that.

A Bit about Oliver

Childhood
I was also born in London and was brought up in the house right on the River that my mother still occupies. I had a very happy childhood and adored all the schools to which I was sent (The Dragon School in Oxford and Westminster School in London). I was one of four children with a fair spread of ages (my elder brother Stephen was 4 years older, Diana 2 years older and Paul was 4 years younger). One of my main interests dates from fairly early in my life. I was still pretty young when my father, Diana and Stephen got fed up playing 3-handed Bridge and introduced me to the game, thereby starting a lifelong passion that continues to this day.

Messing about in Boats
My parents lived on the banks of the River Thames in West London, and the River was always a central theme. With the exception of Paul, we all got into sailing fairly young, particularly Diana and Stephen, and many of our summer holidays were aquatic in nature, the Norfolk Broads featuring heavily to start with, and then later on my father commissioned a 50' narrowboat from Braunston Boats and Rambling Rose entered our lives. RR, as she was affectionately known, was a part of our family for over 30 years and we must have covered 90% of the UK canal system many times over during that period, some parts of it countless times. For a while the boat was moored at the Festival Marina at Stoke-on-Trent and Naomi and I used to take off by ourselves or with friends practically every weekend. Scheduling the holiday periods was always a major logistical exercise: RR was normally in constant use between about May and the end of September and never touched her normal mooring for months at a time. Besides various members of our own family using her together or separately, friends and relatives also used her and it was often the case that we were coordinating car pickups and drops at far-flung parts of the system. The memories from this period are quite priceless. Seeing the countryside from a narrowboat gives you a completely different perspective, particularly when you tend to think in terms of pubs a day rather than miles per hour!!!

Greece
When I left Westminster I spent the best part of 2 years working as a rep for a firm of tour operators in Greece. I was set to study Classics at Manchester University and this was an ideal busman's holiday for me. We had been on holiday to Greece as a family once and I had been on a 3-week school trip there as well. I was fairly fluent in Greek when I started working for the Aegina Club and almost bilingual by the time I finished (pity it didn't really help my classical studies at all, because modern spoken greek and the classic variety are pretty much two completely different languages).

Manchester University
I was a fairly undistinguished student, being more interested in playing bridge, snooker, shooting holes in bits of paper, and travelling down to Abingdon most weekends to play drums in a rock band I was a part of. I did find some time to study and did up getting a degree, but I was never an academic at heart. Compared to my siblings I was something of a disappointment academically (Stephen got a 2/1 in Law at Exeter, Paul a 2/1 in Physics & Chemistry at Oxford, and Diana has a PhD in Developmental Psychology from Warwick!). One common denominator between us, however, is that not one of us ended up using our degrees. Paul is now an IT professional, Diana has indulged in careers (She is a very competent "chippy" [carpenter], a registered homeopath and currently runs walking holidays for women) and my path in life was set when I joined the Police in Manchester shortly after graduating.

The Police
Up to a week before I joined the Police I had never given the possibility a minute's thought. At the joking suggestion of a friend (whilst playing pool in my local pub) - joking because with hair halfway down my back and typical raiment of a grubby sweatshirt and patched jeans I looked anything but a suitable candidate - I went along to the then GMP headquarters in the City Centre and chatted to a retired Chief Inspector for several hours. He sold me completely on the iea and a week later I went back with hair somewhat trimmed, the benefit of a bath and wearing my only suit jacket and signed on the dotted line. I've never regretted that decision for an instant and I've never viewed it as "work". Heck, for the past 15 years, GMP have paid me to indulge my hobby - I should probably have paid them for the privilege!!

Interests
My main interests are Bridge, Photography and computer programming. After playing competitive bridge at a fair high level for a fair number of years I gave up playing "face-to-face" in 1991 and now play and teach entirely online. I got into programming around 1982 when I started off writing SQL databases, but quickly branched into C and other compiled database languages and now enjoy using HTML, Javascript, PHP, LotusScript and Access Basic as well. Besides these things, horse-riding and scuba diving are more recent additions.