Larking About

Following my retirement in 2019 from a career in IT, an opportunity to learn bricklaying beckoned. The video below demonstrates the union of a hopeless apprentice with a dreadful instructor 😀

Poetry

The 2020 and 2021 COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in the cessation of in-person meetings at the Beth Johnson Foundation for the elderly charity, where I was a volunteer IT buddy. BJF came up with the idea of using Zoom calls for keeping people in touch. One of the initiatives was to have poetry sessions, where individuals were tasked with writing poems, which were then presented by individuals on the Zoom calls.

Quizmaster

I devised a basic quiz framework (bunch of ideas) which I use when volunteering at care homes for elderly folk.

Furthermore, during the 2020 / 2021 Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns I set initial letter challenge quiz questions for the residents in my street. By way of example, for the question “8 L on an O”, the correct answer would be “8 Legs on an Octopus.”

UK TV

I put together a listing of what I considered priceless clips of UK TV shows and coverage of world events, which I presented to residents at care homes and other voluntary engagements.

Camp Scatico: 1993

Shortly after I’d finished university at twenty-three years of age, I spent the summer at a children’s summer camp in New York State, USA. I kept a daily diary of my time at Camp Scatico.

I transcribed letters exchanged between myself and my mother while I was at camp.​​ I’ve also scanned an endearing letter from the Camp Scatico director (Irwin Fleischner), which he sent to me a couple of months after camp had finished.

Camp Destination & Day Trips

  • Camp Scatico – Elizaville near Red Hook, New York
  • Boston, Massachusetts (day trip)
  • Hyde Park, New York (day trip)
  • Washington DC (day trip)

Travel After Camp

  • Provincetown & Martha’s Vineyard on Cape Cod, Massachusetts
  • Montpelier, Vermont
  • Quebec City, Canada
  • Montreal, Canada
  • Albany, New York
  • Pittsfield, Massachusetts
  • Manhattan, New York

Travel maps of the above trips.

Atop the World Trade Center building 2. The corner of WTC 1 can be seen in the left corner of the picture. The Empire State Building is shown to the upper-left of my head.

Memory Lane

I visited Camp Scatico in June 2023, thirty years after I’d previously been there – some photos of my look see are shared below.

The following page is a record of my first US summer camp adventures (with Camp America), in 1989.

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