I was born in Epping, Essex 17 miles outside of London. My father was then a London bus driver and my mother a clerk…

Hackney Technical College was situated in an old Victorian building on Mare Street, Hackney, North-East London. My fellow horologists were a mixed bunch…

A rite of passage for the student watchmaker is the purchase of her or his first set of tools. In those days there was only one place to go – Shoots in Clerkenwell…

The Introductory course we were taking at WOSTEP was four months long, and ran up to Christmas. For each stage the theoretical element was followed by a practical one and involved performing all the necessary techniques repeatedly…

The most influential Watches of Switzerland boutique was on New Bond Street in London. I would later work there but first in Oxford. The shop was situated in Cornmarket Street. It wasn’t a large store but it did sell a wide range of brands, mostly low- to mid-range, from Tissot to Rolex.

The first workshop we built was on the top floor, in what had been George Somlo’s office. We designed it to accommodate two watchmakers but in such a way that we could squeeze in a third if we needed to. Compared to the standards of today the workshop was primitive.

Renaud et Papi were producing some of the finest complicated watches on the market at that time.

My first task was working on Tourbillons for Audemars Piguet. Tim Grönefeld was my project manager, and his brother Bart managed the overall running of the workshop.

In 2000 self-employment beckoned, registering at the Chamber of Commerce under the company name “The Watch Workshop”. With the tools I used to make the Foundation Watch, we set up a small workshop in Rolle on Lac Leman.

Over the previous years the brand had been working with a range of calibres from different manufacturers that we used as the basis of the original Piccadilly. An in-house calibre was needed for the credibility of the brand and we achieved this with the SM2 movement: The flexibility of the design meant we were able to make six different versions of the calibre.

Prior to leaving the brand, in my spare time, I organised one last project. It was made under the branding of my old school and based on a school watch. It carried the names of 16 watchmakers all alumni of WOSTEP. It was a bookend to that part of my life.

I spent the next five years deconstructing and photographing watches for a plethora of different watch companies independent and mainstream. It was an interesting period and I was privileged as an outsider to the companies to be allowed in and to dismantle millions of Swiss francs worth of watches.

My father’s family were builders and carpenters, my mother’s family ran a sand and ballast business, all entrenched in Essex, English, except my great-grandmother who was from Romany. One evening around 2012 on the journey back from Wales to London, to catch my plane to Switzerland, I stopped at the Magor service station on the M4 just before the Severn Bridge for a coffee.