This site started off as a history of the Coughtrey family.  I never got very far along that road, and eventually left it to Coughtreys with genealogical skills and enthusiasm greater than mine.  Even so, the earlier chapters, the photograph album and the Notice Board have proved of interest to the family researchers.  What happened was that after the first page I got rather too interested in the history of this particular Coughtrey, and went on and on writing - and I've still got a long way to go!

The result is a rather unusual sort of site - an autobiography just for the fun of it!  It seems to me that life stories that appear on the Web are usually nothing more than extended CVs.  That's to say, the authors try to present themselves in as good a light as possible.  All the bad or potentially embarrassing bits are left out and the good aspects are probably exaggerated.

Oddly enough, I don't feel any compulsion to present myself in any particular way, although I admit to a certain amount of self-censorship - just to protect your delicate sensibilities, you understand.  Also, I'm sometimes writing about people who are still around, so I have to be reasonably careful.

To those who may wonder why I'm bothering to do it at all, my answer used to be simply "why not?"  But since then a number of things have encouraged me to keep at it.  I have a few regular readers who wait (and wait ...) for each new instalment and seem to be entertained.  Also, there have been a number of spectacular reunions, resulting mainly from the chapters where I describe life at Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet.  In fact I was motivated by this to set up a separate website for past and present pupils.

Thirdly, people often want to correspond about all kinds of things - places, people, events, etc, that have caught their attention on the site.  Most visitors arrive at the site by typing something into a search engine.  What they find might not always be quite what they were looking for, but sometimes it still interests them enough to contact me.

As to criticisms about it being too long and rambling, etc - why should that worry me?  I'm not trying to get it published as a paperback or make money out of it.  If it bores you, surf off!