About Colin Palmer
Colin Palmer originally worked for ICI in the 1960's in Slough as a technical services representative. One of his tasks was to identify & provide solutions to problems encountered using the ICI priming machine.
Colin grew increasingly frustrated with the slow paperwork trail involved whenever he wished to make changes to the design of this painting machine so in 1969 Colin decided to leave ICI & set up Palmer Primer with his first wife Christine & offer a timber priming service to local timber merchants & importers.
In the early 1980's Colin realised the demand for this priming service was nationwide, so decided to sell these timber priming & coating machines direct.
In 1993 Colin Palmer decided to retire in order to concentrate on his love of art including oil painting, water colours, stainless steel sculptures, pottery & photography.
Colin crafted several contemporary stainless steel sculptures for his own enjoyment & for several of his friends. He even considered selling a few of these very unique stainless steel sculptures but never seemed to have the time. He was always too busy doing something else.
He also bought himself a Microlight for Christmas - The maiden flight not going entirely to plan when he realised that accelerating across the back garden without wings at a rather higher rate of knots than was considered prudent was a little unwise - microlights don't need brakes whilst flying, but they certainly need them to stop on the ground, and promptly crashed head-on into the garage in spectacular fashion!!!
Colin also had a few scary moments - such as when he took his second podgy wife (Janice) up as a passenger in his microlight & seizing up the centre cylinder of the Robin 440 three cylinder engine - Excess weight blamed as the contributory cause!
Or running out of petrol whilst flying over sensitive military airbases, almost certainly caused by a heavier load than he had calculated for, and in this particular instance, landing in Alconbury (an operational US airbase at the time) which nearly caused a political security incident, though at the time the military police saw the funny side of the incident and dumped the rather overweight 2nd wife off in the direction of a petrol station for a bit of exercise and burn off some blubber!!!
His love of photograpy continued throughout the years, always eager to take unusual photographs of day to day events, at night, or in snow when the rest of use were in the warmth. Colin even experimented with taking photographs whilst flying his microlight. It's just a shame this was all just before the internet took off and the likes of Flickr existed because he would have had a ball.
Colin remained in the UK for several more years before embarking on a trip around the world. At this point it should also be mentioned that Colin enjoyed driving down to sunny southern Spain in his modified diesel Range Rover with a huge American caravan numerous times, before getting fed-up of the reliability problems with the auto gearbox & diesel engine match up & buying a Toyota Landcruiser.
In 2001 & growing increasingly fed-up with high council tax bills & plain incompetent politicians ruling the country, Colin decided to sell up & move to southern Spain with his second wife Janice to enjoy what he hoped would be a long, happy & contented life. Whilst travelling abroad he continued to use his laptop PC with modem & mobile phone to remain in contact with his son Richard & daughter Jo, plus his older sisters Kath & Monica, and his many friends, especially, David Bingham, Alistair Fulton, Andy Carter & Glen.
Unfortunately Colin's retirement plans in Spain were cut short when he suffered a massive heart attack & stroke on the 26th October 2001 aged 64, literally weeks after having moved to Spain. Having said that, he had eight fantastic years of doing exactly what he wanted to do, he enjoyed the freedom & the sunshine offered in southern Spain & he went out with a bang - what a way to go!
Though sadly missed, Colin Palmer's work continues in many forms & he will never ever be forgotten. His own artistic achievements are scattered across the world in the form of his stainless steel sculptures, paintings, pottery & his photography..