Steve Fagg: Some Biographical Notes

I was born, at a very early age, in the Strood district of the City of Rochester. Rochester is one of the Medway Towns in Kent, some 30 miles south of London, England. My parents (Leonard Fagg and Barbara Fagg, née Crockford) were both natives of the town of Sheerness on the nearby Isle of Sheppey, but moved to Strood soon after they were married. They lived there for almost a quarter century before moving a few miles to take up residence in the village of Hoo, where my Mum still lives. My Dad died in 2005.

Hoo is the village that gives its name to the Hoo peninsular, which is the part of Kent that sticks out into the North Sea between the Medway and Thames estuaries - there will be a geography test next week, so pay attention! :-)

I have just the one sibling, my younger sister Marian. She now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband Terry and their two delightful daughters, Rebecca and Charlotte, just a few miles from my ex-home in Harlow.

I entered the world at around 1.30am on Tuesday, 13th May, 1958 in the family home where I lived for the next eighteen years before I left to go to college. I was educated first at Gordon Road school in Strood (until age 11) and then at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, Rochester. Thanks to a happy conjunction of good schools, parental encouragement, and natural ability, I did reasonably well academically: amassing nine 'O' and three 'A' level passes. In October 1976, I left Medway for Loughborough (between Leicester and Nottingham in the East Midlands) where I spent the next three years; emerging from the University there with a BSc(Hons) in Computer Studies.

While at the University I probably spent more time, and certainly expended more energy, on working as a DJ and studio manager at the student-run radio station (then University Radio Loughborough, now Loughborough Campus Radio) than I did on my studies. It was there that I first adopted the soubriquet "Nightowl" (spelled thus in those days), applying it in particular to the weekly late evening DJ show featuring electronic music which I hosted for the last eighteen months of my undergraduate existence. The name was taken from the James Taylor song of that name (which I knew from Carly Simon's performance on her "No Secrets" album, rather than the original), the lyrics of which seemed to describe my lifestyle at the time pretty accurately!

So, in August 1979, I left college and went to Harlow to take up a job with what was then known as the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL), which was at that time part of the ITT conglomerate. I lived there for almost 24 years, firstly (for over four years) in the local YWCA (now known as 'The Angle') and for ten years from 1993 in my own house in the Church Langley district of the town. STL became part of the British company STC in the mid-eighties after ITT sold off its shares. In 1991 (having bought and later sold ICL) STC was absorbed into Northern Telecom (now known as Nortel Networks). I worked at various jobs within the labs at Harlow (now known as the 'London Road Facility') throughout that time; to see what I got up to at work there you'd better look at my CV.

Sometime in 1994, the then Lisa Wentzek (now Fagg, née Fugate), managed to steal the heart of this confirmed bachelor and we were married, in Harlow, on Friday, 11th October, 1996. We have two cats, Thomas and Sophia, but no children.

In August 2001 I was made redundant by Nortel after 22 years there. Losing my job was a tremendous blow to me. Looking for work in those circumstances was a miserable business and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I suffered a bout of severe depression. Altogether, I applied for well over a hundred jobs, was called for eleven interviews and was eventually offered a job as a Senior Computer Technician in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge University, taking change of all aspects of the Faculty's computer facilities. I started work in my new role in February, 2002. Having been herself out of work since January 2001, Lisa took up a job in London at the start of March, 2002. A new phase of our life began opening up before us...

"The road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the road has gone

And I must follow, if I can.

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say."

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

One thing, at least, was clear: our future lay away from Harlow! My promotion (from 1st January, 2003) to Computer Officer meant that, inter alia, I'm required to live within 20 miles of Great Saint Mary's Church in central Cambridge. To meet this requirement and minimise the impact on Lisa's daily commute, we took a house in the Romsey Town area of the City. From the start of March, 2003 we became residents of Cambridge.

The house in Harlow was on the market from that point onwards and the sale was finally completed in mid-October. Having left her job in London, Lisa also found work in Cambridge and at the end of January, 2004 we completed the purchase of the house we'd been renting here.