FatFreddy's memories

Allez les Verts

During my lone vacation in France in 1977, from a cafe in Villefranche sur Mer, I watched Liverpool beat St Etienne to win 3-2 on aggregate and advance eventually to take the European Cup home to Liv...

Paper chase

Anyway, whilst sitting there with the windows open, and whilst I was distracted listening to American Pie on Dial-a-Disc that a sudden summer wind got up and whisked away thousands of paper Work Req...

American Pie

During a hot summer day, whilst I was working at a certain energy organisation on the North Sea Gas conversion project, I was rather distracted listening to Dial-a-Disc on the telephone (remember that...

Vulcan XH558

I was at the Biggin Hill air show and the highlight was definitely the Vulcan Bomber XH558 which is the last one still flying. XH558 is a marvelous aircraft and stunning to watch. It is based at Brun...

Watching Satellites

The Sun newspaper had a satellite watching feature detailing every day where and when you could see satellites in the sky, weather permitting of course. In those days of technology advance people wer...

Wagon Wheels

I'm not really sure about this one, but I've seen a photo of me as a baby of, perhaps 2 years old. On my face is a smearing of chocolate, and in my hand was my favourite treet, a Wagon-Wheel. I had ma...

Saturdays at Pearsons

My own saturday job as a boy was working at Pearsons in Enfield in the restaurant kitchen.  I think I used to get five pounds for a whole days work.

During the summer holidays I got to ...

My bed's a swaying....

Yes, I remember the earthquake very well, after all it doesn't happen too many times in ones lifetime in this part of the world.

I was sitting up in bed, watching the television, very late. ...

The first sparks of Computing

Without doubt the spark that got me into computers in the first place was our lunchtime computing lessons with our Physics teacher, Mr Fage.

We spent time in a lab playing with some educatio...

To New York by Concorde

I took a concorde flight with British Airways whilst I was working for a certain US Bank. They had a special offer at the time, flight out by concorde, back by 747.

The cabin was surprisingl...

I thought that Paris was going to get it

I remember watching the result on television, sure that Paris was going to get the games. In fact, I remember thinking that a London-Paris bid would have been good.

I was very pleasantly sur...

Carcassonne

One of my many visits to Carcassonne in the Languedoc in France. It has this wonderful medieval castle dating from the 13th Century or thereabouts.

Carcassonne is in the land of the Cathars ...

Solo Whist

 During my sixth form at Edmonton County I do remember spending an awful lot of time playing Solo Whist. It seemed to have been a bit of a compulsion amongst us. I think it was JS who encourag...

Blake's Seven

One of my favourite television programs at this time was Blake's Seven, real sci-fi escapist stuff.

My particular favourite was Servalan, the woman that was Supreme Commander of the Terran F...

Holidays at Middleton Tower

When I was young I remember spending at least two summers at Pontins Middleton Tower near Morecambe in Lancashire. The main building was designed to look like an ocean-going liner and was called th...