My name is Mark Whitehouse and I’ve been a Member, Supporter and Trustee of The Brightwell for many years.
Where to start? I was born and bred in Surrey. My birth certificate says I was born in Twickenham which was part of Surrey in those days, today it’s classed as part of London. I grew up with my mum and dad, sister and brother, me being the baby of the family.
When I was at school, I always had aspirations of being an airline pilot. I’m useless at exams and I never got the qualifications required. Actually, I left school in 1979 with one ‘O’ level, in woodwork, one CSE in geography and one in human biology. Not exactly fantastic results and the reason I was unable to follow my aviation career. Later on in life I learnt to fly a Boeing 757 & 767 full motion flight simulators in the BA Training Centre at Heathrow airport. Dreams can come true if you work at it!
I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and took on an apprenticeship with Ronson products (the lighter manufacture) to become a precision Toolmaker. After 3 years of my 5-year apprenticeship my parents decided to move to Horsham in West Sussex so I had to give up my career in engineering. It was during my employment in an estate agents I was introduced to computing. The computer kept breaking and I kept fixing it, this was in 1982.
My passion for IT began then! I saved up and purchased a ‘Commodore Vic20’ and taught myself the computer language ‘Basic’. In those days computing was a ‘dark science’ but I loved it and wanted to pursue it further. Ironically, six months later my parents move back to Twickenham! We had lots of friends and relations back in Surrey! Anyway, I applied and got the position of customer engineer for the 8th IBM personal computer dealership in the UK in 1983 and never looked back.
In those days I physically had to build the computers, to install a floppy disk drive (no hard disks back then) I had to use a frequency counter and an oscilloscope to set the correct alignment; too much techie stuff, sorry! After a couple of years I’ve got involved heavily in networking and designed and installed some of the first PC networks in the UK. Back then I became (not by choice) a bit of an authority on networking/data transmission being headhunted by a number of manufacturers. I even acted as a consultant to Microsoft in the UK helping to design the first release of Windows (blimey I’m showing my age!).
Without commenting on every company my career took me through, I ended up working for Intel Corporation running their software division across Europe. I seemed to spend my life flying around Europe and North America, sounds glamorous but trust me after a few years it tends to wear you down.
Spending hours walking around airports I had noticed that I was struggling with my walking so my doctor sent me for an MRI scan. In 2003 I was officially diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. I had some good insurances so opted to quit my career and entered the slow lane.
I moved to Uphill, Somerset, in 2007 to be nearer my family. I did a charity walk (wheel) from Edinburgh to London. 7 of us (with MS) and their helpers. It took exactly 1 month and we raised just over £35K for the MS Society.
After moving to Somerset, I stumbled across the West of England MS Therapy Centre in Nailsea. Struggling with my mobility I joined and started Physiotherapy, which I still attend at the Centre, on a weekly basis.
I volunteered my services and started out redesigning the website, which was rather basic at the time! This later progressed to designing and creating the database that the Centre still uses today. At the time we were building a new Centre in Bradley Stoke (where we reside today) so I helped design the network layout cable design and wiring closet located in our IT room. I even integrated the CCTV so people could watch the building of the new Centre, live over the Internet. I became a Trustee in 2014.
We started off with two computers, now we have nine desktops, 14 laptops all loaded with office 365 and cloud based services. In our IT room we have upgraded to some advanced ethernet switches that we can manage from anywhere! We upgraded our Wi-Fi system which seamlessly works throughout the Centre (even inside the oxygen chamber) The best IT systems silently work in the background which is what I wanted to achieve. I work closely with Dave Whittaker, another IT/Database Volunteer, who is a great support and sounding block.
In 2019 I met Evelyn and we married two years later. Evelyn’s heritage is from the Philippines, her caring nature shines through and is a tremendous help to me, to be honest not sure what I’d do without her.
I could go on and on about IT and everything associated with it!! I’m often at the Centre (with Evelyn) I realise it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I’m really proud of all our Centre has achieved and will gladly show anyone who is interested what great systems we have in place. Just come and have a chat if you see me!
See you at The Brightwell soon!
Best Wishes
Mark
Brilliant intro!