I am an 80-year-old ex-RAF man - not a career man but simply a 1943 wartime conscript. I was a photographer with the Kodak UK company, so when the recruiting chap at RAF Edgware, Middlesex, asked which job I would like to do I told him I wanted to be a Photographer. He looked down his list and told me there were no vacancies and that I would have to be a Cook and Butcher. The poor man did not know that I could barely boil an egg. I pleaded with him to look again. He found a vacancy. I travelled to India (Bhopal, Calcutta) and Burma (Rangoon).
I spent the rest of my life as a copywriter and art director with the Kodak company's Advertising and Promotions Division. Nowadays I fulfil commissions to write libretti for choral composers, as well as hymn and carol texts. Schools and hospitals ask for Patronal and Founder's Day hymns; Editors of forthcoming hymn books and choral collections such as the RSCM's 'The Carol Book' (2005) seek out existing texts from my agency, Jubilate Hymns Limited. I also write for chapel and cathedral choirs (http.www.paulwigmore.co.uk).