Introduction A FEW DAYS ago I joined a dozen or so like-minded souls for a country ramble and litter pick, facilitated by Canoe River Cleaner, Jim Elliott, in partnership with Grimsby Community Organisation, Centre 4. The walk, which started out from Centre 4's hub on Wootton Road took us out onto open fields to the …
WRITING ABOUT Master & Commander recently stirred memories of a visit I once made to HMS Victory, lying in her permanent berth at Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard. If ever a ship embodies the spirit of Nelson’s navy, it is this one. HMS Victory at her berth in Portsmouth I remember stepping onto her decks and immediately …
My previous post - 'Warning! Contains Common Sense' - looked at the proliferation of superfluous safety signage on lorries using our road network. In this post I turn my attention to the roads themselves. TAKE A DRIVE along any UK motorway or A-road, and you’ll notice a growing trend: more signs. More warnings, more instructions, …
A FEW DAYS ago my wife and I had occasion to travel from our home in North Lincolnshire to Sheffield, a journey of just more than an hour. It was one which included the M180, M18 and M1 motorways, and typically for a weekday, we shared these roads with a great many heavy goods vehicles …
'Upon the headland the Geats erected a broad high tumulus plainly visible to distant seamen ... within the barrow they placed collars, brooches and all the trappings which they had plundered from the treasure hoard. They buried the gold and left that princely treasure to the keeping of the earth, where it yet remains ... …
As befitting a writer known to have a ‘butterfly mind,’ my blog comprises a potpourri of posts written on a random range of subjects. Lacking an overarching theme or intended direction, the various essays have been prompted by whatever may have occupied my thoughts and tickled my imagination at the time of writing. However, a …
Signage on the approach roads to Thornton Curtis proudly proclaims the small North Lincolnshire village to be the home of a Tournai Font. Despite having jouneyed through the village countless times, I'd never been tempted to examine the said relic - until several days ago. It was one afternoon during the recent hiatus between the …
“Every war is ultimately a civil war for we are all brothers and sisters, one to another.” Dillon Burroughs When I was a lad in my early to mid teens I would regularly obtain books from the village’s lending library. These were novels, mainly. Of the few non-fiction books I borrowed, there was one I …
My December 5 post, ‘HMS Alliance’ is a pictorial account of my family’s visit to the Royal Navy’s only remaining post-war ‘A’ Class Submarine. This is the main exhibit of the Submarine Museum at Gosport, Hampshire. The visit, made in 2014, had been planned to include attractions in and around Winchester and Portsmouth and included …
RAVEN MOON 