Well, folks, as I've mentioned already, my name is Mark A. Cooper, and I was brought into this world on 16 March 1971. Given that the picture on my home page doesn't really help that much, I'm 5' 8" tall, with brown hair, hazel eyes and armpit hair. Also, despite what the sweatshirt in that picture might suggest, I'm actually English :)
My mother is called Sandra, and my father is John, and they get along like a house on fire ("Have you ever been inside a burning building, miss?" -- Nobby Nobbs, Men at Arms by T. Pratchett). I love them both very much, and to show them how much I love them, I'm the only one out of the three Cooper children who actually left home and didn't try to come back again :) Perhaps 250 miles was a little excessive, though...
I mentioned above that I was one of three children; I'm the eldest, and my sister, Vicki (perhaps the most well-balanced out of all the children), the youngest, born in October 1974. I have a middle sibling, but I'm not allowed to mention him on my website...
Friends... (yes, I do have friends...)
My bestest friend in the whole wide world is John Croucher,
whom I met at the tender age of 9, when we were in the same class
together at school, and we've been friends ever since (despite
some hairy moments when I got involved with computers, and he got involved with girls
:) ). We both have the same warped sense of humour, and back in
the late Eighties, we used to prat around with improvising comic
sketches and comedy dramas on tape, including one called "Star
Wart: The Next In The Sequence", thereby pre-dating the
likes of George Lucas by ten years :)
Another good friend of mine is Stuart Hiscock (and yes, that is his name, poor sod), a former colleague from when I worked as a bingo caller at the Rotunda Amusement Arcade, Folkestone, Kent. He shares my interest in Terry Pratchett - and the lucky swine got to meet him when the Great Man visited the town for a book signing; he's been gloating ever since (but then I have to let him; he got Terry to sign a bookmark for me :) ). Still, I don't hold this against him (much), and have even gone so far as to invite him to come with me to MillenniCon in July 2000, provided we can both get the money and time off. We're both into writing poetry, too, and he's produced some stuff which contains very powerful imagery. It's a shame his spelling is completely up the creek ;)
These two people aren't my only friends (honest), but they are the top two (and I'm certain they'd be embarrassed to know that I'd said that about them).
What I do to finance my hobbies (oh, and to get food and electricity and stuff, too)
At the moment, I work as a Sales Associate in the Business Machines department of the Ashford branch of Staples UK. Basically, my job is to convince people that they really want to buy a fax machine, or a modem, or an overhead projector - particularly from us. Until recently, I also wrote the store's internal magazine, HARD $ELL. Actually, the magazine had become quite popular; the staff enjoyed reading it, and one or two managers had asked me to write one for their stores (I'm assuming, of course, that they weren't humouring me :) ).
Hobbies and Interests
These days, the things that float my boat are:
Likes
Dislikes