I borrowed my brother's acoustic guitar when I was about 1995-ish I guess. After learning a couple of chords I ended up writing a song. After learning a few more I wrote another song. This continued for a while until I moved away to Uni and was forced to buy my own guitar. I continued writing the odd song at Uni which was fun.
Then I graduated, got a job, got married and spent less time writing... well, in fact I spent NO time writing.
At the end of 2002 (New Years Eve actually) I became a dad. In early 2003, as H was begining to develop his own character I suddenly felt inspired to write again.... so I did, writing "Seven Months" (He was seven months old at the time... do you get it? ;-) At a similar time Apple released Garageband which suddenly gave me the facility to record stuff. That was the key point, suddenly I was able to start recording and discovering my older stuff again. This in turn got me writing new stuff and it all snowballed.
By being able to record my stuff I was able to let other people listen to it for the first time (I'm very shy you see ;-) There's no way I could ever sit in front of anyone and play/sing but I could (just about!) give them a CD and then run away quickly while they listened to it. This was a massive step for me and the feedback I got encouraged me to carry on.
In July 2005 I went on Clothcat's "Let us Gig" course to try and get over my fear of public performance. I had a major fear of performance and wanted to make sure I got over it by making myself go through it in the hardest way possible. I refused to have a drink to 'soften my nerves' I insisted on playing to the group solo acoustic... it was scary!! BUT..... I did it and the world didn't dave in. In fact, I actually quite enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more each time I played and at the end of the course played to a packed pub and wasn't actually nervous, this was a huge landmark for me. With the course I was able to play my own songs with a full band and it was a fantastic feeling.
There was a big down after the high of the gig and after a few months I couldn't believe I was the same person and couldn't imagine playing in front of a pub. So.... next big step required... I decided to start going to open mic nights in Leeds. Solo, acoustic, scary. But very rewarding. This quickly progressed to playing full set gigs in and around Leeds. I've been having a great time ;-)