Hello
I started working in London restaurants in the 1980s before getting into the music business. Later I studied at Oxford and Glasgow universities as a mature student and went to become a producer at the BBC for some years before writing my first book - a cookery memoir - while running a restaurant in London. I embarked on my second book, a novel published in 2020.
My Story
Being a celebrant has changed my life and sometimes allows me to do the same for others. Combining a love of words and music with a deep sense of universal spirituality, I always look for insight that will help me understand the emotions and experiences that will make a ceremony meaningful. While I do not adhere to any specific religion, I am interested in many traditions and draw on many rituals from all over the world, both ancient and modern. Growing up on an isolated farm in Scotland, connected me deeply to nature. Today I still find peace in the wilderness and head for the forests and mountains whenever I can. This makes me feel part of something greater than myself and though the relationship is unknowable, I find I can draw comfort and meaning from the natural world:
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
William Wordsworth, 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798'