Introduction and greetings

[Geoff Bannister]

Greetings from a new member of the group, although, looking through 
the messages  a number of names with whom I have either exchanged 
posts or crossed swords is revealed(!) Here follows a part of my 
story...

I am English and grew up in Burnley, about 35 miles north-east of 
Manchester which was then a cotton town. In 1949, at the tender age 
of 9, my family migrated to South London and I lived either in 
Wandsworth or Wimbledon until 1994 when I moved to West Somerset, 
first Minehead, then Porlock, about 180 miles west of the capital.

I trained as a teacher and spent 32 years in a school in south-west 
London, teaching Maths for the entire period and running the IT 
department for the last 9 years up to taking early retirement in 1993.

A family death, and Inheritance Tax led us to sell up and move west 
the following year as mentioned above.

I married in 1971. My wife and I have three children. My eldest son, 
who is 32, is currently working part-time for a Doctorate in Theology 
at the London School of Theology and we also have a twin son and 
daughter, 30. My younger son is a computer consultant and apparently 
is a leading expert in Unix systems while my daughter has taken a 
less exalted route, having worked with horses, served behind a bar 
and is now training as a children's nurse.

I have been an evangelical Christian since the age of 21 and am a 
member of Minehead Baptist Church, having been involved in work with 
young people here and also in London for something like 35 years. We 
have just stepped down from our work with the boys' club; although I 
claim to be a 25 year old pretending to be 65 I am hoping that 
someone else will feel called to assume the mantle.

I have two border collies, who insist on taking me for an hour's walk 
twice a day and tell me that walking 4-5 miles is good for me. I am 
interested in railways, photography, LOTR, Star Trek and run a 
website about Exmoor: www.aspectsofexmoor.com which you are all 
invited to visit.

I first made the acquaintance of Harry at the end of 2002 when I saw 
the second film while on holiday in South Wales. Having then, in 
short order, having also seen the first film, I rapidly bought and 
read the books and discovered the HPFGU group in July 2003 since when 
I have posted fairly regularly.

I am not sure how much I shall post here at the moment. I think I am 
suffering a little from HBP overkill. There seem to be a large number 
of threads - certainly on HPFGU - which have been done to death, 
including those on Snape and Horcruxes so I shall watch from the 
battlements under my tin hat for the opportunity to snape (oops, 
sorry!) snipe at other contributors to the group.

If you've got this far without moving on to the next message out of 
sheer boredom, I would like to thank Potioncat for inviting me to 
join this illustrious band of ne'er-do-wells.