He played the piano and guitar and loved teaching me his favourite songs on both. I spent many hours singing along with him and pedalling his old reed organ whilst he taught me to play. He got me hooked. His garage was an even more fascinating place for a curious boy, filled as it was with tools and pieces of wood he was tinkering with. I wasn't aware at the time, but his father had been a cabinet
maker and I later discovered in the dormer room a hand made tool chest of my great Grandfather's planes, chisels and gouges, some of which I am lucky enough to own and use to this day. My father had also inherited some of his Grandfather's skills and I would watch and try to help as Dad renovated our Victorian house in Maidstone where I grew up. I learned a lot about using tools from him which stood me in good stead when I got my first job working at WHSmiths Do It All aged 16. Towards the end of school, our careers adviser gave us a Cascaide questionnaire to complete. We were told to answer the 50 questions as truthfully as possible to give us a good chance of finding our best fit career. To the delight of my Grandfather and CDT teacher, one of my top three recommended careers was Musical Instrument Technology. I applied for a course at Merton Technical College and was accepted based on my abilities. When I had finished my A-levels, I began the two year course, paying my way through by continuing to work two jobs at home, the one at Do It All and a second at my local music shop where I learned about setting up electric guitars along with many other useful skills for a young repairer. I graduated from Merton two years later with two Distinctions and a Merit in Advanced Musical Instrument Technology and began applying for jobs locally. Fortunately for me a post had just opened up at a local violin shop in Newington where the previous luthier had moved on and after two long interviews, I was offered the position of instrument repairer at Newington Strings. I spent 24 years working there and subsequently at the Tunbridge Wells HQ, repairing and setting up many thousands of instruments over that time, but in 2019 it became time to move on. Due to a family catastrophe, my wife and I decided to move our clan to Scotland, where we had previously been married, and Leaves Of All Colours was born. So it does look as though I was meant to repair instruments. But there is one last piece to the puzzle, you see I am half Maltese, a nation full of craftspeople. So really, the universe chose my career path for me and I could only have been considered negligent had I not heeded its guidance. My workshop at Leaves Of All Colours continues to offer exceptional quality repairs and set-ups on instruments of the violin and guitar families and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Maybe even one of my little boys, who always seem so fascinated by the goings on in my workshop, might want to pick up the batten at some point....
