Not game
Until I saw today’s Google Doodle, marking the 82nd anniversary of Jerry Lawson, the electronic games pioneer, I had always been convinced that I had been born far too early to ever be adept at electronic games. Now, I realize that it is not a question of age but ineptness. My first encounter with such games was the game where … [continue reading …]
It will be lonely this Christmas
A gentle, softly spoken man, he lived in a terraced house in a street of what had once been a mill town, but it was now the late 1980s and the town had become a dormitory for Belfast. The old community had been diluted by the arrival of thousands of new people living in the numerous housing developments that encompassed … [continue reading …]
Going on holiday
At last, the English summer holidays have begun. It is fifty years since our first summer holiday in Westward Ho! (The only place in England with an exclamation mark in its name). In the 1970s, a railway track still ran along the railway valley from Barnstaple to Bideford. The line had been closed to passengers by Dr Beeching in 1965, … [continue reading …]
Heathercombe Brake School Photographs
There are 679 (or thereabouts) photographs here. Some of them are duplicates and some of them are in random order. Paul Pope sent me a zip file in 2014 and I have been meaning to sort and upload them ever since. To have digitized these from prints to computer files must have taken many, many hours. They are nearly all … [continue reading …]
The old scams seem to work
There can be few people with email addresses who have not received at least an occasional email that seeks details that would allow the sender to defraud them. The “Spanish Hostage” scam is the oldest approach used (thus named because when it began two centuries ago people wrote letters claiming to be held hostage in Spain and promising abundant reward … [continue reading …]
Travelling from the Junction
Yeovil Junction is a storybook station. It is scenic, it is timeless, it is friendly. It is a place where one can carry travellers’ bags onto the platform and install the travellers in seats on the waiting train. Strangely, it is the terminus for some services from London. It was in the county of Dorset until 1991, when government legislation … [continue reading …]
Managers destroyed the church
The 2021 Census shows that people who identify as Christian are now a minority in England. The statistic is unsurprising, the Church of England is in terminal decline. The cult of managerialism has ensured its demise. Since the 1980s, a story has circulated in church circles of what would have happened if Jesus had taken the advice of management consultants: … [continue reading …]
Sharing slogans
Frequently, social media carry advertisements for slogan tee-shirts. Slogans saying things like “stop plastics” or “save our oceans.” The advertisers of those shirts did not seem to appreciate the irony of adding to environmental pollution in the name of saving the planet; or perhaps they just didn’t care. Presumably, there will be a significant market for tee-shirts which declare the … [continue reading …]
Why can’t I explain?
A friend talked about relationships, something at which he seemed to have enjoyed success and at which I have been singularly unsuccessful. Pondering my failings brought a recall of distant times. ‘Madness,’ I thought. Not madness the psychological illness, but Madness the music group. It is some forty-two years since the sound of Suggs and the other band members caused … [continue reading …]
See Emily Play
The nurse changed the date. “Today is 1st May.” “Good morning, Emily. How are you this morning?” 1st May? Oh no, it would be so boring. Standing outside for hours and then a dinner where there would be very long speeches. All those old men and all those toasts. “Daddy, do I have to go today?” “Of course, we must … [continue reading …]