About me

I trained as a teacher at Dartington College of Arts in Devon and taught music in secondary schools, first in Surrey and then in Liverpool, where I also sang in the cathedral choir. When a vacancy came up in Hereford Cathedral Choir I jumped at it....and sang there from 1977 to 2013.

I took an Open University honours degree in chemistry and biochemistry, which kept me busy in the gaps between teaching all day, singing each evening and bringing up two children. Computers had just arrived in schools at the time and, as a maths teacher now, I was expected to teach the new 'Computer Studies'. So I did that as well, keeping a page or two ahead of the pupils.

I must confess that it was the programming side of computing that appealed to me; the fun of analyzing a problem and then telling the computer, one step at a time, how to solve it. So after several more years of teaching maths, computer studies, music and science - after my children were grown up - after realizing that I needed something to challenge me once again - I bought myself a 'Windows' PC and started a two-year programming course with a well-known distance-learning provider.

It was all very new to me and I floundered around with what seems now the most basic stuff. It took me ages to discover "right-click", what 'files' and 'folders' were, and what was meant by a 'browser'. After a year, the course providers (they shall remain nameless!) decided to open a students' forum. The help and advice of newly-found online friends saved me so much time and tears in sorting out the 'nuts and bolts' of using a computer.

It was this experience that made me realise that there must be lots of people like me out there, keen to use a computer for all its benefits but puzzled by all the jargon. So in Autumn 2008 I started My Computer Tutor - my first venture into any sort of business. I travelled all over Herefordshire and into parts of Monmouthshire, teaching people how to use their computers. In Spring 2013 I retired from Hereford Cathedral Choir after 36 years. I felt I needed a change of scene, so My Computer Tutor is now serving Exeter and East Devon.

Colin Rivett

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