I spent 20 years working in IT (or ADP - Automated Data Processing - as it used to be called) firstly in the north-east, for an engineering company as a computer operator, then from 1980, in the beautiful Georgian city of Bath, for the Ministry of Defence (Naval Logistics Department) as an analyst programmer. My experience was largely (and I use that word advisedly) on mainframes which in the early 1980s, together with their peripherals, would fill a room the size of a school gymnasium ! The first processor I worked on was the size of a commercial freezer and had 3Kb (that's right - 3 Kilobytes !!) of main memory ! I still can't quite get my head round today's minuscule storage media. In my day, a 200 Megabyte disk was the size of a large hatbox and now you can get umpteen Gigabytes on something the size of my little fingernail ! I programmed mainly in COBOL (the IT world's equivalent of Latin !) accessing network style databases. Despite all that, I look back on those years with great affection as we had a very much 'work hard, play hard' philosophy, even to the extent of socialising with colleagues outside work hours because we all got on so well together.

Unfortunately, my health deteriorated during the 1990s with spells of depressive illness, and the development of Type 2 Diabetes in 1995. Ironically, 1995 was also the year that I gave up my 40-a-day smoking habit and I'm proud to say I've never had one since, although, like an alcoholic, I don't regard myself as a non-smoker but as a smoker who hasn't had a cigarette for 14 years ! Anyway,this all culminated in my having a stroke in September 1998 , from which I've never fully recovered, and consequently I was medically retired 9 months later. Later, In 2001, I spent a further 2 weeks in hospital as a result of acute renal failure, and experienced first hand, albeit temporarily, what dialysis is like - painless but very boring and on the whole, time consuming and inconvenient compared to kidneys ! So look after YOURS !

Since then, I have moved to the English county of Worcestershire to be nearer my widowed mother who was 90 at the end of May. She is still mobile, but has arthritis and is partially blind due to the 'dry' variety of AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration) for which, sad to say, there is currently no cure. She is also prone to severe bouts of vertigo, so to some extent we are providing support for each other.

We used to have a Yorkshire Terrier named Bertie, who sadly had to be put to sleep (aged 16) in September 2008 as he had severe dementia. We now have another dog - a Jack Russell terrier - whom we got from a nearby rescue centre. We don't know much about his background but we think he is about 3 years old. The centre told us his name was Jack, which I thought highly unimaginative bearing in mind his breed, but I didn't think it fair to change it to something entirely different, so I enlarged it to 'Crackerjack' or just 'Cracker' for short which sounds pretty much the same. He seems to answer to it now anyway !. He's a smashing little chap - very good natured and friendly (except for cats,rabbits,birds etc) - and already I love him to bits..

My health continues to be fairly precarious but I'm still here, trying to get as much out of life as I can, and I value the companionship of the Blurtit 'family', as I can't always get out to socialise in person as much as I would like.
THANKS FOLKS !!

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Pre 1998 (Before the stroke)

- Rugby Union (played very occasionally)
- Cricket (likewise)
- Darts
- Skittles (NOT the same as 10-pin bowling !)

Before and after my stroke.

- Pub Quizzes
- Crosswords
- Reading
- Astronomy
- Using my PC
- Photography

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~ me now as when I first heard it in the Spring of 1975 ! ~
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