YESTERDAY IN MELTON MOWBRAY

Golden Days. As is well known to almost everybody who knows me, I once spent six years of my now extended life in the small islands of Bermuda ; six of my most impressionable years and very consequential ones in that I was married on 'the rock' and created there my two much loved children.  It is also well known that although we left the island for good in 1969, I, like Sir George Somers - the founder of Bermuda - left a fair piece of my heart behind to maintain tabs with its progress.  In October of this year, Lynn and I will return to celebrate our golden wedding anniversary, a chance for us to have perhaps a last look around at the island I once fell in love with. But this post is not produced as a personal updating, more a moment to draw attention to the forthcoming publication of what promises to be a beautiful new book of sketches which relate to the early days of Bermuda's colonisation which has been put together by Dr Edward Harris and his team at the N...

I recently offered this small, festive piece of personal memorabilia to my good colleague in Bermuda, Roger Sherratt for his police 'bygones' blog relating to those of us privileged few who were once lucky enough to have lived and served on those idyllic Islands in the mid-Atlantic.  After posting it to him, I have decided to offer it up as my own little blog for an exposure to the rest of the world. ’Twas the Night Before Christmas … Twas the night Before Christmas When all through the house Not a creature was stirring Not even a mouse The stockings all hung By the chimney with care In hopes That St. Nicholas Soon would be there … Clement Clarke Moore (1779 - 1863) At this festive time of year Roger asks of his colleagues past and present, to remember and record bygone memories of Christmas times spent in the Islands - for me, a span of some 50 years since.  Lynn and I were to marry at Hamilton Register Office in 1965 and so next year ...

The Great Adventure of my Life' 1963 - Brrr! For my latest posting I have to confess that I am about to take a personal and sentimental journey into my by now, extended past. I will perhaps remind you that I am now well embarked into my eighth decade but I can guarantee that I am sufficiently self-assured enough to realise that my mind is now replete with my memories; indeed, as we are occasionally informed, one's memory is frequently sharpened with the onset of what is now regarded as 'old age'. The spark for this particular memory jolt was a recent reminder that it was long ago in September of 1963 that I set off on the first great adventure of my life. Fifty years ago, as a single young police officer patrolling the streets of the capital city of my native country and with no particular skills or ambitions, I was about to fly from Heathrow airport on the inaugral flight of the then brand-new Boeing 707 jet airliner which had recently superceded t...