Fiction
Jinnie’s Story – Book Three, Chapter Three
Jinnie’s mobile woke her. Glancing at the radio alarm on her bedside table it read 23:45. She wanted to catch an early train in the morning so had given up waiting for Dirk to call [more…]
Blog
19th Century
Crimean War, Part Six
In 1954, as the centenary of the end of the Crimean War approached, my uncle John Alldridge produced a series of articles for the Manchester Evening News which vividly described that campaign. In this article, [more…]
20th Century
Book Review: The Ratline
I don’t read non-fiction books that often, however I’m glad I picked The Ratline up when I was idly browsing suitable reading material for a holiday last year (the holiday got cancelled). For, those (like [more…]
Arts
“Have a lovely evening!”
“Have a lovely evening” are the words I often heard as children were collected from school at 3.05pm. Of course, as a member of SLT, I had nothing better to do at the end of [more…]
20th Century
A Very British Message to Garcia
Previously, my colleague Fred Brownbill wrote of US Navy SEAL Marine Commander Brian Bourgeois, commanding officer of SEAL Team 8, who was killed in the first week of December 2021 while fast-roping from a helicopter [more…]
Biography
Sailing my life away, part 32
RESPONSES AND YARNS There were loads of comments on part 31 including the one from Sparks who enquired whether I had discovered a time machine as I had dated the article Saturday 1 January 2002. [more…]
20th Century
The Desert War – January 1942
The start of 1942 saw the British starting off on the front foot but ending the month retreating eastwards as the Germans and Italians advanced and as usual there was lots of action on the [more…]
Arts
Sparklets Soda Syphons of The ’60s & ’70s
The Beginning If society ever collapses to the point where I’m judged to be a suitable contestant on Mastermind, my specialist subject will be ‘Sparklets’ soda syphons of the 1960s and 70s’. I’ve been fascinated [more…]
Arts
Another Caribbean Christmas, Part One
I have been looking forward to getting back on board a cruise ship for some time now. Covid has caused the cancellation of 3 cruises for me so far (June 2020, Christmas 2020 and June [more…]