We possibly all remember iconic moments in television history, like the day the SAS stormed the Iranian embassy in London in May 1980 bringing to an end a hostage siege. I remember watching the news on the evening of Saturday 5th June 1993, the day that the Holbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough fell from it’s…
I was recently watching a programme about Neanderthal man who lived on earth around 35,000 years ago and the main focus of the programme was the beautiful artwork that had been left hidden for tens of thousands of years and only recently discovered. The main role of Neanderthal man way back then was to explore,…
There are two things that are meant to improve your chances of selling your house; the smell of freshly ground coffee and freshly baked bread. Apparently, the aroma of freshly baked bread evokes pleasant memories of childhood – and has more to do with chemistry than it does psychology. In an effort to cut down…
As a child growning up in the sixties, I remember our family having a huge respect for food, which we don’t seem to have today. Dinner was plated up and put in front of you and you were expected to eat what mum had cooked and eat all of it, we weren’t allowed to be…
I have heard friends say that they have stopped listening to the news. It is always full of bad things and disasters that it just makes them feel worse so they give up. I have a good deal of sympathy for this view as I often find myself either shouting back at the TV or…
Did you know that Greenland was in fact named by the Norwegian-born Icelandic Viking Erik the Red who was exiled there for manslaughter? He named it Greenland in an effort to entice travellers to settle there. Far from being green, over 80% of Greenland is covered by a pure white ice sheet, and is the…
When we first saw our new home in Ipswich eight years ago, one of the big attractions to the property was the fields opposite. As a child, I grew up in a house which looked out over fields and I can remember many happy hours playing out in the fields. Almost as soon as we…
When I was a student sharing a house with 5 other girls, we had a pet hamster. Sadly I no longer remember the hamster’s name – but let’s call him Fred. We all loved Fred and took it in turns to feed him and clean his cage, which was kept in our dining room. One…
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)…
I am assuming those of you reading this will know the well-known children’s story of Goldilocks and the three bears. A family of three bears, mother, father and baby bear live in a house in the woods. They eat porridge for breakfast, and on this particular day the porridge was a little too hot to…