CURRENT MISSION Becoming self sufficient... ABOUT ME I was born in Canada but grew up in the rural West country of England, an area I love dearly. I trained as a chef and worked all around the West country, including at River Cottage with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. After around 5 years of busting my nuts through 90 hour weeks for not much more than minimum wage, I suddenly had a thought, it was - "f*ck this". So I went to Japan to write a book and generally eat, drink and be merry. I now work as a broke but much happier writer. You can read my monthly food/gardening column in the Mendip Times here - www.mendiptimes.co.uk I have recently bought a timber house in Sweden, where I hope to move in 2016. Spare time left over after working and eating is usually spent reading, cultivating various strange organisms on petri dishes, planning future trips, gardening, or placating my platonic life-partner and incessant tormentor, Darwin (a Hahn's macaw).