My wife and I had been doing the rounds of relatives, delivering Christmas presents during Advent 1990 and I remember having a conversation in the car as we headed for home. We were talking about the turn of the milennium in just ten years time and I will never forget the moment Karen (my wife)…
How do you feel when you see on the news pictures of wildfires, hurricanes or floods? More often than not, the most extreme conditions happen in far off lands and whist we might sympathize with people, this is happening in a different country, even different continents and we might well disregard events like this as…
I met an amazing man several years ago, who is sadly no longer with us. John Hawkridge struggled to walk even the shortest of distances aided by sticks and I guess that in his early years would have been labelled with the horrendous term “invalid” yet with grit and determination, this incredible man managed to…
The village of Hebden in North Yorkshire sits about mid way between Burnsall and Grassington in upper wharfedale. Pedestrians travelling from the western side of the river would cross the perilous River Wharfe by mans of stepping stones as the only two river crossings were at Burnsall down stream and at Grassinton up stream. A…
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…