Mike's Area

   

Mike at his Acorn computer

Mike

 

    Mike originally came from Yeovil in Somerset and announced his arrival to the unsuspecting world in September, 1947. (He was born at a very tender age y'know!) He has an older sister, Francesca and a younger brother Robert and also a younger sister Susan. After a few years education in Yeovil, he attended a boarding school for partially sighted children in Exeter, where he stayed until 1963. After working for a short time in the advertisement office of 'The Western Gazette', Mike moved to working in a 'D.I.Y.' shop where he stayed for a little over 5 years.

 

    In 1968, his father died and soon after this Mike changed jobs again and worked in a textile factory where they manufactured glass fibre yarn and material; this job was double-day-shift work which gave him time to look around for an engineering job. First an apprenticeship and later a short term of working for Westland Helicopters in the machine shop. In 1973, Mike took up an appointment as Audio Technician at Berkshire College of Education in Reading; this necessitated a move from Yeovil as he felt it was a little far to travel to work after breakfast!

 

    The post of Audio Technician remains, though the name of the College changed a few times and then later the College became the Faculty of Education, University of Reading. As they still haven't 'sussed' Mike out, he is still there! Mike now maintains the Technical Support Unit website at the University of Reading and you may care to browse around those pages when you have the time to spare.

 

    Hobbies: Sound Recording (surprise, surprise!) he has a part-time sound recording business by the name of Mike Sounds; this operates from a largish room where Mike is able to shut himself away for hours whilst working on sound recordings.

 

    When not buried in Dat tapes and digital audio signals, Mike is very involved in Eating and Cooking, Cooking and Eating, Mowing the grass, (but only when pressed into it!) Gardening, Photography, Cycling and following newsgroups on the internet such as 'uk.media.radio.archers' this particular group is ostensibly there to discuss matters pertaining to BBC Radio Four's 'The Archers'; there is an as yet, unwritten rule that the only topics that should not be discussed in ' UMRA' are: Religion, Politics and The Archers! The first two have proved difficult for some to observe but the third has been found to be very easy.

 

    During the early summer of 1997, a BBQ was held by the McMillan family for 'UMRATS' and has now become an annual event held in Reading! There was another Barbecue for 'UMRATS' held on the 30th. of May, 1998; again the weather let us down. The weather also caused us severe problems for the BBQ'99 on May 22nd.

   

   The main radio channel for Mike is Radio 4 however; he much bemoans the passing of 'Saturday Night Theatre' as this was a very relaxing hour and a half on a Saturday evening; perhaps he is a cynic but feels that there still are a few people around who can manage to focus their attention on a radio play for a whole 90 minutes at a time! Being heavily biased towards sound, rather than television, (the McMillan family don't have a 'goggle box') Mike feels that the pictures on radio are far superior to those on telly. Mike refuses to make any positive comments here about the changes made to Radio 4 by James Boyle - mainly because he cannot think of any!

 

   

 

Back to home page.