I'd had enough of working for a living, at least for a while, so I moved back to Oxford to be with my girlfriend Hilary. I joined Bernard's band, together with my old schoolmate Andrew, our fellow housemate Wiff, and a young classically-trained drummer from New College called Paul. We added a female singer, a…
Thursday afternoons at Birkenhead School were for playing soldiers. Everyone was more or less obliged to join the Combined Cadet Force. We were fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, to have a genuine, high-ranking ex-soldier as our CO: Lt. Col. Arthur N. Green (AKA "The Ang"). Dad’s Army was one of the most popular programmes at the…
One night, at about half past 10, Hilary rang. My landlady had already gone to bed. I kept my voice down but the damage had been done. The following day Mrs H announced that she hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night and she was going to put a lock on the phone. I…
Until this year, I'd never written anything longer than a few thousand words (apart from my M. Litt. thesis, and that was more than three decades ago). I suddenly got the urge to write a story. Its origin was an entirely uneventful trip to an art gallery in Mayfair. I am a terrible typist, but…
Thor's Stone is known to everyone who lives, or has lived, on the Wirral. The outcrop known as Thor's Stone It is a big chunk of sandstone on Thurstaston Common, from where there are superb views of the Dee and across the Mersey. You are aware that you are standing on a peninsula: in one…
There will never be another Armistice Centenary. On Sunday 11 November 2018 at 11am - exactly 100 years after the guns fell silent and the slaughter stopped - local people and visitors gathered for a brief commemoration at our Sunday market. *** For more than 12 months I've been leading a Heritage Lottery-funded project to identify…
The Wight Stuff 