About Phil Owens

Phil Owens started his working life with a variety of jobs, working on the fairground, tyre fitting, through to TV aerial rigging. He then started as a Saturday kitchen porter in a chain of pizza restaurants, leaving 4 years later as the head chef. After a brief period of working as a manager, he left the catering trade to start a new career in a burgeoning IT industry. He is now employed as a Service Delivery Manager at the Ipswich NHS Hospital Trust in Suffolk, where he is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the IT infrastructure.

Working in IT has given Phil some valuable skills, ones that he brought to use in writing his first book. He says, "two of the main skills that I feel are transferable are, logical thinking, and attention to detail. Saying that, when writing my book, both of these went out of the window for quite a while." Nevertheless, the finished article is one that Phil should be proud of.

His love of animals has led him to be responsible for many dogs throughout his life. These have in the main, been rescue dogs, and have come with all sorts of behavioural problems. Despite having several dogs that have had destructive tendencies, Kopek has been their biggest challenge to date. The continuous tales of woe from both Phil and Ronnie, caused their friends to urge him to write them down. Phil says, "I never dreamed that I could fill a whole book with these tales. But it just goes to show, how much Kopek has managed to do with his short life so far."

In 2010 Phil and Ronnie set up a new website (http://www.DogFriendlySuffolk.com) featuring in-depth reviews of off-the-lead walks with dog friendly pubs close by. This has been a great success and Phil now has a regular slot on Radio Suffolk giving updates on the latest reviews. He says “DFS had brought together both mine and Ronnie’s love of writing, our two beautiful dogs, and not forgetting great opportunities to sample Guinness across the Suffolk County.”

You can keep up to date with Phil on his Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/Phil.Owens.Author

Interview Questions and Answers

Where were you born
I was born in Great Crosby, a town near Liverpool in Merseyside. I lived there until I was 12, before moving to Southport, a small Victorian seaside town about 20 miles further north.

Tell us a bit about your family
I’m one of two, my brother is 6 years older than me. My father, now retired, was a chartered accountant. My mother was a legal secretary; she gave up work to raise us kids. She then did some part time work for a few years when we were teenagers. My parents didn’t have too good a later life. The year after my dad retired, he contracted Guyon Barre Syndrome, and spent nearly two years in hospital recovering. My mum had a bad stroke and spent a year in a nursing home completely paralysed, before passing away in November of 2008.

How was your time at school
Interestingly, most of my teachers thought I was either a bit slow, or lazy. I even went to a child psychologist to see if there was a problem. Their opinion was that I was of above average intelligence, but easily bored. That of course didn’t go down very well with the teachers. I passed both the 7plus, and 11plus, and gained a scholarship to St. Mary’s Grammar school in Crosby. Christian Brothers ran both the prep and main schools; this gives you an interesting take on life I think. My interest in school dropped massively when I learned that due to my being colour blind, I would not be able to join the air force as a pilot. Consequently, I think I made school history as the first pupil to leave with no qualifications. When I got my first ‘proper job’ as a kitchen porter in Pizzaland, I started to go to night school, and I picked up five O’ Levels and an HND in computing over the next couple of years.

What did you want to do when you left school
My only ambition was to be a Royal Air Force pilot. Unfortunately, due to my colour blindness this was not to be.

Have you traveled much
I was a late starter with regards to traveling abroad. Up until I left home at 18, I spent most of my holidays, and a fair few weekends, up in a caravan in the Lake District. Until I was in my late 20s, the furthest I had traveled was the Isle of Man, apart from one trip to New York to see relatives when I was 15. In the last 10 years or so, I have traveled a fair bit. My wife and I drove to Turkey one year, in an 18-year-old Jag, camping along the way. That was an interesting experience.

What sort of hobbies do you have
Far too many. I have a bad habit of starting an interest and becoming fully immersed in it, to the exclusion of everything else, before getting bored. At present, my hobbies include playing the guitar, genealogy, and writing. In 2010 my wife and I set up a website(http://www.dogfriendlysuffolk.com) for off the lead dog walks in Suffolk that have a dog friendly pub close by. This has been great fun, as it combines my wife’s love of walking along with my favourite pastime of drinking Guinness.

Tell me about your job today
I joined the Ipswich NHS Hospital Trust in November 2005. I was looking for a new challenge after working for a consultancy for almost a decade. It certainly has been a challenge, but also lots of fun. I am responsible for running the IT department; this includes the servers, network, applications, and the service desk. We are in the process of implementing ITIL, a best practice framework or the whole department. We have one of the few Accredited Service Desks within the eastern region. This was as a result of having best practice within the service desk. In 2010 I was given the responsibility of running the Trusts Outpatient Appointments Centre. This has been my first foray outside of IT for many years, and is proving great fun.

What are your future plans
I want to complete the job at the Trust, and have a best of class support services. I’d also like to write another book at some point.

Anything else you want to add
I have two fantastic teenage daughters from my first marriage. They live in Bolton with their mother, and we go up to see them for the weekend about once a month.
I used to be very active when I was younger, fanatical martial arts Akido, and Karate. These days I tend to avoid anything physical if at all possible, apart that is from visiting pubs and sampling the Guinness