Work in progress
Previous | Contents | Next I well remember the table-tennis (“ping-pong” we called it) tournaments being played on the big dining-table in a fast and furious fashion. Played with plywood bats covered on each side with glass-paper (sponge rubber covered bats hadn’t arrived yet), and nearly always interrupted by somebody treading on the ball ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next To be fair, he did show me the value of using tools in the correct manner. He once had me make, with a file and a hacksaw, a 3/4 inch mild steel cube out of 1-1/8 inch round steel, and the sides had to be flat, parallel and square. ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next I suppose that most of us have, within our characters, behaviour patterns which could certainly be construed as a lot less than virtues. Throughout our lives we are at times maybe covetous, greedy, self-centred, unthinking or just downright bad-tempered and unpleasant – not necessarily huge personality faults in themselves ... Read more
Reminiscences of a happy childhood in the 1920s and ’30s Contents
Previous | Contents | Next The workshop (as mentioned in the “steaming event” — Chapter 1) was a large attic room sporting a ten-foot long bench equipped with a carpenter’s vice, a small bench fitted with metalworker’s vice and drilling-machine, and a smaller bench with grinding-machine and a gas-ring. A large table served as ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Sunday mornings, however, preceded Sunday afternoons, and my younger brother Angus and I (the “wee boys” as we were known to all and sundry) would begin our day racing down the six flights of stairs, (we lads slept in the attics) one hand on the bannister-rail and the ... Read more
Heather asked me to record an audio version of her uncle Douglas Sharpe’s “little book of reminiscences”, Wind of Dreams — as if anybody would want to listen to a Kiwi read a Londoner’s stories about his childhood, over a hundred years ago now! Nevertheless, here it is — and ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next In retrospect I have often thought it somewhat surprising that, at any rate on some occasions, the Fire Brigade was never alerted by some zealous passer-by on Sunday afternoons to the old Victorian semi-detached in south London which served as our family home when I ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next To me, one of the wonderments of memory is the sometimes quite random triggering, by seemingly unconnected phenomena, of a particular train of recall dredged up from the long flooded depths of the subconscious. A picture here, a poem or a song there, a word, a book, possibly a ... Read more
Previous | Contents | If you landed here from the outside world, understand that this page Is part of a bigger, personal project. I’ve tried to keep my personal engagement with Brian Donovan in the 1970s to a separate page, where you’ll find more about him and his work. Another article relates ... Read more