Hi – my name is Mary Jones and I’m a writer. (Hence the name of the blog. K.I.S.S.)

As a writer, I’m a Jack-of-all-trades: I’ve written short stories, articles, play-scripts, computer programmes in machine-code (yes, I am that old), poems, a crime novel,  a school prospectus, press releases and Maths worksheets.

The rest of my life has been pretty varied, too. I’m an educational hybrid – I studied Maths & Physics at school, switched from Science to Arts at University and ended up with a Philosophy degree. I then spent most of my working life teaching Maths and a lot of my leisure time working with an amateur theatre company. I can cook, knit, crochet, pronounce the full name of the Welsh village LlanfairPG, and solve differential equations. My spot-welding’s not too good, though.

To provide a bit of much-needed stability in my life, I’ve stayed married to my husband Philip since 1965. He’s better than me at just about everything except the knitting and the crochet, but his spot-welding isn’t too good either. He acts as my editor and critic, and we’re still married, which we both count as a fantastic and unusual achievement.

We emigrated from England to Australia in 2008 and are still working out whether we’re Poms or Aussies. This means we can celebrate whoever wins The Ashes.