Tuesday 10th December 2024 The long-range weather forecast was spot on last week. I don’t usually pay much attention to such forecasts since they’re rarely accurate enough to plan by, but last week I made an exception. I was hoping to take advantage of a YHA special offer which required making a booking prior to […]
By September 2020, the country was gradually being released from its lockdown restrictions, and Geraldine had started performing wedding ceremonies once more. She was being given many of them just then since several of the other celebrants were classed as vulnerable and didn’t yet feel comfortable venturing out into the community. There was still a […]
When I began my Open University course in 1985, one of the set books for the course was called “Micro-chips with everything” which was a series of essays derived from five seminars held in July 1982. In the UK, the government declared 1982 to be Information Technology Year and the seminars set out to ask […]
September 2019 started with us both being away on separate holidays since Geraldine was in Kent until the 8th, and I set off to go to Essex with Jim on the 4th. I had been invited to take part in a cycle trip to ride down the length of the river Rhine. Jim and his […]
Like everyone else my age, I don’t feel old. But when I think back to life when I was in my 20s I realise that the world is a very different place. I bought a book in 1983 called ‘The Timetable of Technology’ and it listed all the major technological innovations of the 20th century. […]
For the first few weeks after my retirement at the end of July 2018, I spent several hours sorting out my company pension. I received a formal offer on 1st August but I then had to go and speak to someone at Pensionwise to hear their advice. This was mostly a formality and by mid-August, […]
Photographic memories are very important to me and I’ve been taking photographs for most of my life, so you’d expect me to have many pictures to cherish, but this needs to be placed into context. In the mid 1970s, whilst I first owned a camera, the cost of developing and printing a film was high, […]
After the announcement of a voluntary redundancy (VR) in October, I carried on as though nothing had changed or was going ever to change. The routine work up to Christmas was eased considerably by the amount of time off I took to use up my annual leave. The remarkable thing about working for a large […]
Like all children I loved Christmas. In the 1960s, unlike today, Christmas only began in Advent, which is the run-up to Christmas Day and lasts between three and four weeks. In our house, the crib was the first of the decorations to be displayed, but from a possibly imperfect memory, this didn’t happen until mid-December, […]
In Summer 2017 after a few weeks back at work full time I felt myself relaxing into the old routine. I was trying hard not to get too anxious about things beyond my control and it appeared to be working. The role had eased into a fairly settled phase where I was splitting my time […]