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What Name do you give to a War? The First World War is called the Great War after not being the War to End all Wars. World War Two is called The Great Patriotic War by the Russians. Gulf War One was Saddam Hussein‘s invasion of Kuwait while the Second Gulf War could easily be ca

Go to India! Dad gets promotion but it means moving from Cambridge where I grew up, to its rival Oxford. Just inside the Oxford Ring Road, the new family home is in Old Marston two miles from the even smaller village Elsfield, resting place of Baron Tweedsmuir, former Governor General

Reed Smith again host 3Cs Community at their offices in the Broadgate Tower where guest speaker is Mark Stewart of IMC/Bank of Telecom. This is not a bank as you know it, rather a platform for trading telecom services including automated payment services that ultimately aim to remove

….There was Phone Phreaking A kid born blind in 1949 has a miserable childhood. At his school for blind children, he is abused by a nun, his mother pushes him to live up to his high IQ and his parents’ marriage is violent. But he has a talent – perfect pitch. Usually

Glad I saw Ken Dodd live in Wolverhampton when I had the chance. My blog from 2012. How Tickled I am As a writer, one tends to read a lot. And in a small way to help to keep my local library open, much of this is by reserving books from there. Haringey has a pretty good service but so

Shoeing Smith So what did my granddad do? Unsurprisingly: His peace time job – a shoeing smith meaning he specialised in shoeing horses – important assets in the days before cars became universal. Just as you can’t run a fleet of lorries without mechanics, the work o

Unusually, Valentine’s Day in 2018 coincided with Ash Wednesday the first day of Lent. Who was St Valentine? Best answer might be Take your Pick! as Catholic Encylopaedia mentions three of them and when alive, none of them was associated with romance. Valentine of Rome was one w

A Lightbulb Moment 10 years after inheriting the Muswell Hill Soup Kitchen, you are at a bus stop checking your mobile to see when your next bus is due and a question pops up. Could we use this technology to show a homeless person the nearest place where they can get a hot meal and so

In Debt Back from Thailand, I have no job and a couple of debts I want to get rid of. This again means delaying a career job, saving and working hard for a couple of months with maximum overtime. Simon who left the overland trip in India in order to hitchhike back to Blighty for a for