MYthSELF Chrtistopher Walker

I was born in Sunderland (UK) in 1972 the youngest child of three.  My brother, with whom I shared our bedroom, is five years older, my sister seven years older.  It was once said, In very good humour at Christmas lunch that I was an accident - but I never felt like it.  My mother was a housewife, school dinner nanny and skilled dress maker.  My father was a production supervisor in a tyre factory.  My father had been a coal miner like his father and was of a large, prominent Catholic family in his home town.  I was brought up Catholic, my mother converted to Catholicism when I was a child. 

I grew up in a cul-de-sac built in the late 1960's and had lots of good friends.  I was passionate about things military and spent a lot of time playing war themed games with friends and toys. I was good at school and got good school reports.  I was interested and enthusiastic especially in Maths and Art I did not get football. I have always been a slow reader and terrible speller.  I served on the alter in church until I was 15, then I got a part time job on Sunday mornings as a pump attendant at a local garage. 

When I was little I think I wanted to be a soldier.  I think it was ideas of bravery and triumph which attracted me... and the great suits.  I thought briefly to myself about being a priest but I never heard god calling like they said he would.  When I was thirteen I wanted and received a drawing board for Christmas.  With Careers Service advice I began to think of being an architect.  I got the best GCSE results in my school year and went on to sixth form to get four A levels .  At 18 I left home and went to Oxford polytechnic to study architecture.  

When I finished my degree in 1993.  I moved back home to the north briefly but through friends moved into a room in a shared house in Fulham west London. I enjoyed unemployment for the first time and began to re-consider my relation to the world. I lived in this house until 2001 when I moved to France to share the home of my partner - now wife.  I live there now with no children, many animals making pictures, meat and vegetables, sometimes labouring for money. Between 2013 and 2018 I built an extra house to rent out.

myTHself, Christopher Writer on Christopher Walker. 

He is hardly ever on Facebook.