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86 And Still Counting

Stockholm 2000: Bluetooth and Cashless Payments — The Future Is Now   I was a member of a journalists press trip to Sweden. The theme was "The New Swedish Economy". It had been arranged by an...

  Maguire Family Tree The Unforeseen Consequence of Brexit   I started looking at the Maguire Family Tree from an entirety utilitarian point of view. Brexit had deprived me of my...

James Joyce Ulysses   I bought my copy of James Joyce Ulysses, the 1958 Reprint of The Bodley Head edition at Willshaw's Bookshop in Manchester. It was a 'Getting out of the RAF' gift to...

Peterson, Bluesman, and Giant Pizza Slayer   John, a blues guitarist, singer, and jazz bass player. Very talented. A Physically large individual. The pizza he ordered and consumed at a pizza...

Why Jackie Turner Never Became A World Champion   Sports day was an eagerly anticipated annual event, even for myself, whose puny frame was never going to develop into any semblance of the...

The Real Bill Tarmey I Knew – Beyond Jack Duckworth   Bill Tarmey the individual who played Jack Duckworth was a friend and we had a professional collaboration. I first got to know him in a...

Nunc Dimittis. The Setting Was Awful   I was a diffident and mentally unengaged choir boy. I did enjoy singing decants. But most hymns, musically, bored me. The exception was the Nunc...

Dinosaurs   Roget's Thesaurus. We tend to think of a thesaurus as a collection of synonyms and antonyms. But Roget’s is essentially a reverse dictionary. With a dictionary, the user looks up...

Maureen Became Exactly Who She Wanted to Be   Maureen, once a dowdy and somewhat nondescript young woman, emerged from her chrysalis as a resplendent individual—confident, assertive, and...

  Four Bar Intro – The Door to Possibilities   A great four-bar jazz introduction does much more than start a tune. It Sets the mood and expectation. Draws the listener into the...

Dennis' Swing Club Hamburg   Dennis’ Swing Club in Hamburg, it was a historic jazz club at Papenhuder Straße 25, 22087 Hamburg-Uhlenhorst. It opened in 1968 and hosted major jazz musicians...

Faith   When, I was the manager of A University Bookshop in Manchester, a regular customer was The Professor of Comparative Religion. A very pleasant individual we had interesting...