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 […]
Do our characters ever change? Or am I still the same timid red-haired schoolboy who was always being picked up by his teacher for his untidy writing and getting ‘all hot and bothered’? Going back the nature versus nurture idea, I have concluded that yes, our characters do change over time and this is dependent […]
By the time I was cleared to drive and ride my bike again in early April 2017, I was feeling fine in myself with just some slight tension in my chest if I did things like light gardening. In January, before I had a date for my operation, I had cancelled my intended cycling holiday […]
I believe that our characters are supremely complex. As previously considered, I think that our personalities develop through a combination of genes and environment, but now I want to explore whether the context of environment may have had the greater influence on me. Who we meet, where and under what circumstances must shape our thinking […]
In the weeks before the operation in February 2017, I was very cheerful. I had finally begun to accept that things at work would need to change, and with many people reassuring me that I still had an important role to play, I started to believe it. In January and February, Geraldine and I had […]
My primary school, St Chad’s, South Hill in Whittle-le-Woods was tiny. There were about 60 or 70 pupils when I was there, and just eight in my year group in the final year. The pupils were a cross section of society, although all the pupils were Catholic. Contrary to what you might expect, I didn’t […]
In December 2016, having agreed to attend counselling sessions and continuing to work from home, I gradually began to accept the idea that my life was necessarily going to change, and my mood gradually improved as the year end approached. I enjoyed a quiet Christmas and New Year which felt very normal. The thought of […]