Welcome to my Home Page

For those who are really interested in "me" (fools!), I'm Tony Collins, aged 69, married to Pat (for 47 years!). After 12 years deep-sea in the Merchant Navy, then 26 years working for the Scottish Government with their fisheries patrol fleet, I took early retirement in 2011. We have two children (Fhi 40, and Kenney 37). Our house is in Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland (home of linoleum, Raith Rovers Football Club, and Fife Flyers Ice Hockey Team), but are also the proud owners of a traditional canal narrowboat, "Paws 4 Thought" .

Fhi is qualified (to iTec standard) as an Alternative Therapist and Beauty Technician. In 2018 she qualified as a teacher for Scottish Country Dancing, and has completed an Open University degree in Classical Studies. Around Christmas 2020, she and her husband moved to Italy to be with his mother and disabled brother. She has since qualified as a teacher of English as a second language and has several private clients.

Kenney graduated in 2008 from Napier University with a BSc(Hons) in Sports & Exercise Science (Sports Injuries). He is also qualified as a Personal Trainer. He lives in Kirkcaldy with his partner and their two young daughters, and works as general manager of a restaurant group in Dalgety Bay.

Our Hobbies

Me .....	Our narrowboat, our genealogy project, computing
Pat .....	Scottish Country Dancing, needlecraft, cookery
Fhi .....	loves Scottish Country Dancing (to the point of qualifying as a teacher), and does crochet. They have 4 guinea pigs and 3 cats
Kenney .....	genuinely doesn't have much time at the moment due to his job, but spends as much spare time as possible with his partner, their daughter, and the pet cat. He has returned to coaching both ice-hockey goalies and gymnastics

Current Weather

Time	:	14:00 UTC

Temp	:	4.9°C
Hum	:	75 %
Wind	:	2.6 kts
Dir	:	NW 306°
Press	:	984.9 hPa

forecast icon

There are several reasons for this site.
Initially, it was set up to allow my server entitlement to be used (free) by a local charity. That is no longer the case as I have left the organisation
The software I use for our genealogy project can also produce a website from its data. I realised this could assist in my research, and was uploading a full set of data. Unfortunately, someone started using the data maliciously, and I have been forced to use a cut-down set of data (unfortunately it is now less likely for me to get random hits from unknown family members), but Pat and I have both had DNA tests, and the project is moving forward again
As a retirement present, I was given a weather station. It has the capability to send live data to a website, so I thought I'd share it with everyone.
After a request for more info on our canal holidays (we historically had produced a "live" site updated on a daily basis (for the kids) when we were away, then deleted it when we got home), I re-created a full site containing the logs of all our holidays. As we now have a narrowboat of our own, this holiday log will have no further entries (I have left it for people interested in possibly having a holiday themselves), but I have now created a new section for our travels on "Paws 4 Thought" .