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RAF Kelmscott and summer silence.
I sat in the airless reception area with its cheerful, exhortative corporate posters and thought of communist Russia. Dark wood. Grey, worn carpet. Grey fluorescent lights. Every so often, there would...
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The past. Very much present.
All across the Cotswolds, if you stop for just a few minutes on hilltops, you can find strips of broken concrete, grass growing in the jumbled cracks. Red brick buildings with peeling, grey render and...
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A spring evening’s bimble, being scared and perspective.
I fancied a ride this evening. It’s spring. It’s light. It’s Wednesday. It’s been a bitch of a day in the office. That’s good enough for me. I had to drop our entry fee for the Village Quiz in at a...
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MMC Musings in Cotswold Life
When I popped an e-mail over to Cotswold Life offering them a few snaps and some airfieldy musings, I didn’t really think they’d publish them. But they have. May edition and a whole double page...
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Slow Train
There’s not been a lot of time for two or three-wheeled ambling recently. Instead, a pretty solid wall of work-borne rush, stress and frustration has kept me off the bikes. So, with an unaccustomed...
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Episode 1 – Living on the plastic – for a month.
Episode 1 – July 9, 2013 And so it begins… As a self-confessed watch addict, I know I spend too much time, money and effort pursuing the latest Ideal Watch. I spend hours talking with watchie friends,...
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Dalyan Dolmus station
A Formica-wood topped table, a plastic chair and one of the worst cups of coffee I’ve had in my life. But a view of the local dolmus station across the road from the bakery-cafe. Ancient white Renault...
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None of the gear…
I was lucky enough to be 550 meters up, at the top of Bozburun Tepesi. It was just before sunset and the resin from the pine forests mixed with the Land Rover’s diesely, oily, metallic tang. The old...
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Epic Fail
I want to teach you how to fail. And I want to suggest that you welcome – rather than fear – failure. In fact, even more than that, I want you to learn to harness failure and make it work for you....
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Don’t vote. It just encourages them?
It’s the day after the European election results. Politicians are, depending on the colours of their allegiance, either weeping into their espresso or taking a pull on another celebratory pint of...
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Aristotle, the web and modern citizenship
In early August 2011, the UK’s citizens got involved in politics in a very practical way. They looted, burned and rioted their way across London, Salford, Manchester and Birmingham. Commentators will...
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Dialogue or broadcast? Where’s democracy going?
The way we communicate has always changed. We’ve discovered and harnessed new media time and again – all the way from cuneiform to computers. But the newest change is possibly the most powerful and is...
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The curse of sounding professional.
A while ago, I was amazed to get a letter from my bank telling me I was in credit on my credit card. I came across it in an old file today – and it’s just as I remembered. It was from a real person –...
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Top Gear = Middle Lane
The camera pans onto the three new presenters of “Middle Lane”, the BBC’s replacement for the disgraced Top Gear. They are John Prescott, Boris Johnson and Harriet Harman. Each sits on a special...
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Rock ‘n Roll actually *is* noise pollution.
Oxford City Council has opened a consultation about the dreadful menace that is “non-compliant busking and street entertainment”. Presumably, this will mean that only council-sanctioned, compliant...
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Brooklands
There weren’t many better places to enjoy clear, blue sky and things with engines than Brooklands last Saturday. It must have been a study for the English country idyll in 1906 when Hugh Locke King...
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Clipping the wings of small business
In yesterday’s double-dip “Emergency” budget, George Osborne announced a new tax that means that one group in society will be paying around £2,000 more from next April. No, it’s not hedge fund...
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RAF Manston officers’ mess party tricks. Revisited.
It was in 1993 when she was 70. I’d thrown a party and, of course, Ma was invited too. She wasn’t the sort of mother you’d leave off the invitation list. Not only were parties her natural element,...
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Village Remembrance in Bampton
In need of bacon, as one often is on a Sunday morning, I nipped into the Bampton shop just before the village remembrance parade. A young lad, about thirteen I’d guess, walked in and moved, a little...
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Being Santa.
December 18th. Nick Whitelock sat at his desk by the window and looked out as the cold, winter rain tracked its way down the pane. “Sleet, more like.” he thought to himself. He was, as usual, the last...
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