Who We Are

Phil was born in Dartford (at West Hill hospital, which has since been demolished) and lived in Hextable village, (near Swanley). He went to St Bartholomew's Roman Catholic Primary School in Swanley. At the age of 8, he moved to Orpington. For secondary education, he went to Dartford Grammar School and then Orpington College.

Phil has been working for Scott Wilson Railways in Birmingham since September 2003, having gained a degree from Coventry University in Civil Engineering, and as blokes seem to do, is getting paid more than Jo! Hehe...

Phil has always had a very busy life, being interested in stage lighting, drama/acting and computing while at school, even getting involved in running (an admittedly rather low-spec) sixth-form network when in his sixth form. He then transferred his interests to film projecting at university. He also tried his hand at many other things while at University, such as canoeing, canoe polo (polo, but in canoes in a swimming pool!), hang gliding, radio DJ'ing (getting his own 2hr evening show on the Warwick Uni station) and even more besides. This earned him the title of: Phil "I'm meant to be in another social" Holbourn!

Phil is totally mad and a railway/train nut. He sees the railway as both a career and a passion. He finds the railway itself fascinating. Not the trains, but the infrastructure: How do the signallers tell where trains are? How do you supply power continually to a train travelling at up to 186mph? How do you decide what speed a certain track is suitable for? What components are used and how do they fit together? How do you make sure trains don't hit each other? How d oyou make the track stay where you put it, and how do you decide where to put it in the first place? Questions like that, or, rarther, the answers to them all is what, for me, makes the railway such a fascinating beast to work with and learn about. It's so much more complex than most people imagine!

Jo was born in Nottingham, grew up in Bramcote, and went to Bramcote Hills Primary School nearby. She then went on to Nottingham Girls High School. After that, she moved on up to Warwick University and stayed there for many years! Firstly, she did a BSc in Biological Sciences, then decided that Chemistry was als interesting, so undertook an MSc in Analytical Chemistry. Still not bored with learnign she started a PhD in Biochemisty, which unfortunately didn't work out, so she stopped after a year. She still liked Warwick University though, so then went on to work for them, firstly for a year as a technician in the microbiology group, followed by a year in the chemisty department, where she has had a paper published on her work.

After 7 years at Warwick, she finally decided to leave, and got a job at Birmingham Univeristy in the cancer studies department, where she has done lots of varied and interesting work on leukaemia, and may get some more publications soon. She doesn't earn loads (well, quite a lot less than Phil anyway) but it doesn't matter as she enjoys the work.

Jo is also mad and somewhat less of a train nut. (Edit from Phil: She still is a train nut - I almost contest that she is less of a train nut than me, although I admit she doesn't take a camera every time she goes near a railway line...)
She had a busy life, being involved in Bramcote Hills Swimming Club and later Chilwell Olympia Badminton Club. She then took up American line dancing. At university she was also involved in Warwick Student Cinema but left after giving them 4 years as a projectionist and steward, and took up singing with Revelation Rock-Gospel Choir. She has now obtained a second identity of the mad daftmoo of Bookcrossing where she releases books into the wild, and meets up for lots of socials in Coventry.

How We Met

Jo was working at Warwiuck Uni filmsoc, on the entrance door, one evening. Phil was waiting for a friend of his (Tarik) to arrive to see the film with. However, he never arrived, so Phil spent a good deal of time standing outside the room doing nothing. Jo was also doing nothing for quite a while (can't remember which film it was but the show was not very busy), so we soon got talking. Phil has only a very limited memory of this event but, in Jo's words, "Phil came up to me and told me his life story". Phil was already a member of filmsoc too, but we somehow had not met up to that point. Thus, we soon became good friends. Jo was also a projectionist, and Phil was only a trainee projectionist, so we soon arranged for Jo to be Phil's tutor on a regular basis! Naturally, it wasn't long before the string of 'co-incidences' was noticed by the rest of the society and people started talking...

In January 2000, Phil was at home, talking to his housemate, Ann, about (again) the fact that he really liked a girl called Jo, but was afraid to ask her out. Ann sent him to filmsoc with the words "Go out, and don't come back until you've asked her out!"
Yes maam! Jo said "Yes"....
Interestingly enough, the film on show that day was "American Pie", and Phil asked Jo out after we had just watched it together. Not your average start to a relationship!

This page is part of Phil and Jo's online madhouse. The links below are what is in the madhouse - please look around.