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Music

When I'm not at work, I spend a lot of my time involved in music. I've played the piano for many years, but my main instrument for public consumption is the guitar. I play guitar in the ceilidh band Albireo. Our debut CD "Northern Cross" was recorded by Jon Loomes and is now available on bandcamp. Details of gigs on the Albireo web site.

I also played for several years as one half of a duo, known as Burton & Bechhofer. We played at a number of venues in Manchester over the last few years including Band on the Wall, The Roadhouse, Night & Day Cafe and numerous pubs. In the recent past we appeared as a trio including bass player Phil Cawsey. In Summer 2003 we recorded a number of songs along with drummer Ian Bamford. Check Holly's site for more information about the availability of the CD.

A number of years ago I played in the band fiction, who were quite liked by the local press. Holly and I were also half of the four-piece Going By Feel for a while in 1999, appearing at the Night and Day Cafe a couple of times.

I also enjoy the usual kinds of stuff including eating, drinking, cooking, hill-walking, theatre, films.

Underwater

"If one dives and returns to the surface inarticulate with amazement...then he deserves to go again and again. If he is unmoved or disappointed, then there remains for him on earth only a longer or shorted period of waiting for death; there can be little worth while left in life for him."

Charles William Beebe (1877-1962) *

I took up scuba diving in 1999 and I'm a PADI Rescue Diver with over 350 logged dives in the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Pacific and Indian Oceans (and a couple of quarries in the UK!). I took a dry suit course in July 2001, but most of my diving has been in comparatively warm waters. I'm also qualified to dive Nitrox which helps to add a safety margin when doing multiple repetitive dives on liveaboards. I initially trained at Aquatech in Manchester and I'm a member of their Diving Club.

My favourite dive site is probably the Carnatic, a P&O passenger steamer that sank at Abu Nuhas in the Red Sea in 1869. There are a number of close seconds though.

After waiting some 13 years, including a fruitless special Manta Dive in Kona with "Mr. Manta" (not his fault I hasten to add -- these are wild creatures after all), we finally managed to get a sight of Manta Rays in summer 2012 in the Maldives. A couple of individuals on two dives, then an incredible night dive at Koona Jetty, with half a dozen Mantas barrel-rolling through the plankton above us for forty minutes. A high point in my diving career. The trip also featured another amazing night dive at Maaya Thila, with dozens of hunting white tips. They're fairly docile during the day, often snoozing on the sand, but at night they really display why they're top predators.

In 2010 we were on boat in the Red Sea with a film crew, shooting a pilot documentary. I don't think this has ever aired, but there's a short clip featuring Clare and I descending to, and swimming around the Thistlegorm, one of the top wreck dives in the world. Look for the pink snorkel! The end of that trip coincided with the Icelandic volcano, so getting back was interesting.....

The majority of our diving has been in the Red Sea -- it's (relatively) close, and on a good day provides some fantastic diving, particularly in the marine parks like Ras Mohammed, the Brothers and Daedulus.

In 2003 we dived the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, including a trip out to Osprey Reef. This is a sea mount over 100 miles off the eastern coast of North Queensland that rises up 1000m from the seabed to just below the surface. Strong currents attract a large number of big pelagics, and there's a resident population of sharks. An incredible dive, and well worth the 10 hours of rough sea crossing.

It's not always thought of as a dive destination, but the Mediterranean has some great diving. We've had excellent trips to Sardinia (Villasimius), Gozo (Marsalforn - twice) and Turkey (Kas). It's not full of colourful coral, but the topography and landscapes are beautiful (in particular Cathedral Cave in Gozo) and there are lots of interesting things to look at -- it just sometimes takes a little more effort to find them! Atlantic Diving in Madeira (big groupers), La Gomera in the Canary Islands and the Azores was also good. In 2002 I had the opportunity to dive in the kelp forests off Catalina Island in California which weren't bad either!

Some of my favourite underwater creatures are nudibranchs or sea slugs, in particular flabellina affinis, chromodoris quadricolour, and the Spanish Dancer -- the latter is basically a big red slug that can grow up to two feet long. They swim through the water rather gracefully, however, with a "bucking" action that resembles the flapping skirt of a dancer, hence the name.

I have an experimental on-line dive log using MIT's exhibit framework and Google spreadsheets, although I haven't yet got all my dives in there.

You can see some of my feeble attempts at underwater photography on flickr. However, if you want to see how it's really done, David Doubilet is the man.

*The above quote from Beebe was found in Trevor Norton's book Stars Beneath the Sea (Random House, 2000), an excellent collection of written portraits of the early pioneers of diving. Tim Ecott's Neutral Bouyancy (Michael Joseph, 2001) is also a great read for anyone wanting to know more about why one would want to strap on a tank and several kilogrammes of lead then leap off a boat....

Photography

I have a collection of photos up at flickr.

Manchester City

I'm a Manchester City supporter, although the introduction of all-seater stadia led to me no longer attending many live matches. If you want to know why, read my account. This is part of the excellent Manchester City F.C. Supporters Home Page.

Mystic Haikus

At the HT'00 conference in San Antonio, a hypertext writing competition (known as the Bernies in honour of Mark Bernstein) was held. My entry (which didn't win) was a collection of carefully crafted haikus.

Manchester

Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't always rain in Manchester!