First, there's Pete. Husband, Father, probably several other things too. Pete is 44, and moved to the area in 1997 after having spent a while in the US and after having lived in Oxford since he left university. Pete runs his own business, an IT Consultancy, which inevitably takes a fair chunk of his time. "Spare Time" generally involves being a family man, a reluctant DIYer, and, sad to say, a lot of fiddling with computers. Over the years, projects have included"never having to replace DVDs or CDs again", by putting everything onto computer, and plumbing in toys such as an electronic Weather Centre and a very amateur Web Cam.

Still, we do have a family web site to show for it!

Pete enjoys cycling, can daily be spotted tearing through the streets of London going to and from clients', and at weekends frequently rides in the New Forest. A born-again cyclist, in 2009 having not cycled properly for fifteen years, Pete picked up his bike again to turn "fat" into "fit". The experiment is ongoing, but he's shrunk about 3 sizes since then. And thank God for Lycra!

Another hobby is photography, and Pete has an extensive collection on Flickr.

In November 2003 Pete also started blogging - after some hardware problems in 2009/10 the blog got moved over to Blogger, it gets updated quite frequently now that everything's working once again.

In 2005, Pete - for a very short period - got caught by the Sudoku craze. Rather than solving individual problems he decided to write a program that would solve the problems for him. Unfortunately, by the time he'd written the program Pete had got bored with Sudoku, and the Sudoku Solver program was left to gather dust on a remote corner of this web site.

Then there's Jacqueline, mum and wife.

Jac was born in London but lived in Devon from quite an early age, and has spent a large amount of her adult life in Bournemouth. The eldest of three sisters, Susan and Lorraine both live on the south coast, whilst Mum still lives in Paignton.

Jac's a nurse by profession and worked for years in Bournemouth Hospital, before going into Practice nursing closer to home (in Salisbury). She can also be seen from time-to-time doing bank shifts in Salisbury's A & E department, which certainly keeps her on her toes.

Jacqueline is currently on a fitness drive, although we're not sure how compatible this is with the Sky box she enjoys so much!

Jacqueline discovered Sudoku late in life, in February 2007. Jacqueline kept on getting stuck, Pete happened to mention that he'd once written a Sudoku puzzle solver, and so Jacqueline implored Pete to release the thing into an unsuspecting world. The result can be found here.

On to Alice, the enfant terrible responsible for most of the stress in Pete and Jac's otherwise peaceful lives. Alice has asked that we don't write anything about her, so here goes...

Maisie

Barney (1999-2005)

Carlo (2006-2008)

Finally, we come to the family feline. We're very much cat-loving people, but despite the fact that we live in a quiet village we're far from short of inconsiderate, speeding drivers. Sadly, in ten years we have lost three cats to cars, the only survivor being Maisie. Maisie is very much a seasonal cat. In the summer we'll see her once a day, whilst in the winter she'll generally be found under her favourite radiator. Smart, eh? She can be very affectionate when she's in the mood, and her favourite ploy is to jump onto peoples' shoulders, which can sometimes cause unpredictable behaviour from unwary visitors!

Beneath is Maisie's brother, Barney. Barn died on 27th August 2005, after his kidneys failed him for the second time. We'll never know, of course, but we suspect Barney's troubles started when he was hit by a car. Of all the cats I've known, Barn was the stupidest, most docile, most loving of them all. He even allowed Alice near him from an age when when most cats (and indeed most humans) would have run a mile. We all miss him lots. We hope he had a happy life with us .

To even up the house once again (too many females!), Carlo the Kitten came to live with us on 1st July 2006, aged just ten weeks. A swashbuckler from the start, Carlo caught his first wood pigeon at just three months old - the pigeon was bigger than he was - and quickly became the scourge of rodents and birds in the vicinity. He developed a special relationship with Alice, who was particularly devastated when the boy, again, was killed by someone driving past the house on 7th November 2008, aged just 2½. If we can take any consolation from this, it is that Carlo was tremendously athletic, solid muscle and built like the proverbial brick ****house, and never lived to know illness, pain or infirmity. But it's a poor bargain, especially for Alice.

So, reluctantly, we've decided that there will be no more cats. Maisie will have the luxury of seeing out her days, and we hope there will be many, as mistress of the house. And she certainly seems happy enough about it....