I grew up a long way from here, not just in terms of years but in distance. Over two hundred miles, a long way in England, anyway. It seems so. I lived in a small town of about 20,000 people but I never felt I knew everybody; I never have. Life started to change when … Continue reading Late Train Out of Paddington
I’ve been going to job interviews lately, for the obvious reason that I need a job. Stupidly, I went to one interview in the market research world. Or maybe not so stupidly, because it reminded me exactly why I left it. “We’re looking for a BRIC speaker.” Really. So ok, you want someone who can … Continue reading Training will be given
As a skive from real work today I was booked into a diversity training course. We didn’t have diversity when I was at school. Or rather we did, but we didn’t know about it. There were precisely two black children at my school, out of 1300 pupils. There was one black child at primary. Also … Continue reading Diversity training
Long, long ago, it was Easter and the quiet that comes over country places came over the town I lived in. It was on the edge of Salisbury Plain and Easter was on the edge of summer. I remember two Easters really well, both of them for their near-silence, the same silence I felt this … Continue reading Easter and the ghost dance
Once upon a time, in a land long ago, there was a thing called the Frome & District Pistol Club. That’s how long ago it was. I’d learned how to shoot rifles, or .22 rifles at least, at the local TA Centre in the town I grew up in, back in the days when no … Continue reading A possible
Once upon a time in a land long ago, Christmas came slowly to a small village in Wiltshire, where a small boy looked excitedly for the presents he hoped would come. Dear reader, I was that small boy. And I found them. Under the stairs, in the dark, brand new in boxes but not yet … Continue reading Another little boy
In another life I was helping build a market research company. Between the two of us, we did pretty well at starting with pretty much nothing and unlike Seasick Steve, by the time we’d done with it we didn’t still have most of it left. We got some big clients quickly and we did very … Continue reading The Lost Towns
My step-sister died on Good Friday. Mine was a family of secrets and lies, secrets about names, especially of those who had died. There were lies about where people had come from and the actually very historically evident members of the family whose existence I’ve had to deduce online. I appreciate that in some ways … Continue reading Until we go back
Today, 77 years ago, the 8th United States Army Air Force flew its last combat mission in WW11. Eleven years ago one of the pilots on that mission was staying with me in Suffolk. He told me how he’d nearly not made it. Not from enemy action, but because he’d been at a dance in … Continue reading Walking Back
There’s a new movie out. In fact, like my revisited reaction to On The Road, the novel, when I saw the 2012 film for the first time the other night, there isn’t. It’s on Channel 4, if you’re interested. And maybe, as I was, you ought to be. It’s about an America that just after … Continue reading On the road
