Arts
Brewery Bash 2020 – Post Mortem
A big thank you to all those who contributed to making the bash what it was this year, to those who came and those who couldn’t make it but supported the event anyway. I believe [more…]
Blog
Arts
The Swaling, Part Twelve
If you’d visited Madrid’s Prado Gallery in the early 1980s, about a decade previous to (contrary to the artist’s wishes), it’s star attraction Picasso’s Guernica being moved to its own museum, you may have noticed [more…]
Hobbies
Crossword No. 127
First correct entry out of ‘the hat’ wins a GP mug. Email entries to me by 6.00 pm Sunday, subject ‘Crossword’. Contact here on email Last week’s winner. 126 bogblaster. Answers with next week’s crossword. [more…]
Arts
A Glass Half Full
In a previous article, I asked whether you had ever gazed into your pint and wondered about the beginnings of beer and brewing. This time, I’ll ask you another question. It’s about the pint pot [more…]
Arts
Postkarte aus Bochum (Woanders ist auch Scheiße)
Herbert Grönemeyer made this town a whole lot more famous with his 1984 album “4630 Bochum”. More of Herr G later, but where, I hear some of you ask, is this magical place of which [more…]
Business
Reform & Real Reform
Those of us struggling to get a grip on Chancellor Sunak’s latest relief-measures should note the terminology. He seeks to revive the Covid-stricken economy with a series of tax “giveaways”. When anyone in government talks [more…]
Arts
My Apprenticeship, Part Two
Part one went through the first two years of my drawing office apprenticeship with Babcock and Wilcox Ltd. During the second year, Babcock and Wilcox Ltd became Babcock and Wilcox (Operations) Limited. The first of [more…]
20th Century
An early airman’s tragic adventure
Early 1930: It had been a depressing English winter – cold, dark and wet for weeks on end. In West Wickham, a young man who had left Australia five years earlier and settled here in [more…]
History
The Brown Bull Hotel
In the eighties I worked as a Home Office representative in Immigration Tribunal Appeals in London. We were a team of ordinary civil servants and were pitted against solicitors, barristers, silks, practitioners with an agenda. [more…]