Way back in 1975 when I first started working, I was employed by a textiles wholesaler working in their haberdashery department. I was the only lad at sixteen working in a department with six ladies all old enough to be my mother, or maybe even my grandmother.  They were quite an entertaining little gang and…

My dad was made redundant in 1969 and for a while it looked as though we wouldn’t get a holiday that year, then,  some friends of my parents offered accomodation at their house in Felling, an area of Gateshed, our friends showed us the route through the centre of Gateshead and Newcastle and how to…

I heard somebody talking in an interview on television recently about the Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna, arguably one of the best racing drivers of all time.  He had a formula one career spanning ten years and until 2006 he held the record for the most pole position starts, he raced in 162 world class…

Sometimes, as I travel through the beautiful Suffolk countryside, dashing from one place to another I feel an enormous sense of appreciation, whether it is seeing the beauty of the yellow Rapeseed fields in the Springtime and, remarkably, early autumn now, seeing the golden fields during summer months, ripe for harvesting, the quaint villages with…

I played snakes and ladders at church with some children a couple of years ago and was reminded of my own childhood when we played the game at home as a family and am impressed that this simple game has stood the test of time for over fifty years.  I decided to look at how…

On holiday recently, we travelled to Scotland and back with my brother and sister in law to visit their two sons, one who lives in Cowdenbeath and the other in South Shields on the way back to York, where we were staying for our holiday.  The journey to Scotland involved crossing the recently opened Queensferry…

We have developed a saying in our family over recent months when a car suddenly turns off without indicating “O, I see he/she didn’t opt for the indicator package”  I find it quite frustrating when I sit patiently at a roundabout waiting for a car approaching from my right, only to discover that they are…

Over the last few weeks, I have become a convert to the BBC programme “The repair Shop” a programme I have never really watched before.  I am in awe of the skill of the craftsmen and women who can take broken items and restore them, not necessarily to look as good as new, but primarily…

Sadly Geoffrey Brindley died on Tuesday 26th August 2015, a name that will mean very little to most people, but mention “the Jesus man” and faces in west Yorkshire will light up.  I can remember being out in the playground at Calverley Parkside School in the 1960’s and the word would go around “the Jesus…

One of my first purchases after I started working was a Kodak pocket camera.  I had seen films as a teenager where a spy would slip his hand into his pocket and take out a tiny camera so that he could photograph some top secret documents which had been carelessly left strewn on the desk…