This started as a joint blog to allow our family to keep up with our news and photos, but Ruth started her own blog and a business web site (sew2speak and keys-consult) so I (John) am the one who posts here.

At school I picked up the nickname Sqeze, which is still in wide use among friends today. I was born in the UK and lived a few years in Africa as a child before returning to the UK when my father’s job took him back there 3 years later. I studied engineering in Leicester in the early 70′s and afterwards worked as an IT specialist in various locations in the UK for the CEGB (Central Electricity Generating Board – the state-run organisation which managed the electricity generation and high-voltage distribution until it was privatised and split up in 1990s).

At the beginning of the 1980′s having met and married Ruth, we both moved to Germany for a couple of years. Those stretched a little, and 30 years later we are still there, having lived in Stuttgart, Munich, Schmitten and now Kronberg (which is near Frankfurt am Main). During our time in Germany I continued to work in the IT area for various companies, including: SEL, BMW, DEC and IBM, before landing at one of the largest asset managers in the world, based in Frankfurt.

Now I have decided to embark on the next phase of my life and have taken early retirement. We bought a plot of land in Spain and built a house to retire to – at least part of each year – near Valencia. Ruth is continuing to freelance as a consultant in the areas of quality management and software testing for the moment – until we see how the Euro crisis plays out.