Archive for the ‘My life & thoughts’ Category
When ACE became NCU
December 21st, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In 1985, I was a national official with a trade union called the Post Office Engineering Union, although most of our members did not work for the Post Office (they were then in newly-created British Telecom) and they were not engineers (they were technicians who liked to think of themselves as engineers). We were about […]
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When the front door was underground
December 21st, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In the mid 1980s. the bitter miners’ strike was over and the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers had moved north to Sheffield. At the time, I was a negotiating official with the then National Communications Union and had a meeting at the new NUM offices in Sheffield. When I reached the building, I […]
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Farewell to our special cat
December 20th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In this year’s Christmas letter sent out over the last couple of weeks, we wrote: “In February, our cat Honey will be 20 years old – that’s 96 in human years! She is clearly feeling her age and is happiest when she is within stroking distance of Vee – very high maintenance.” Well, sadly, Honey […]
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Would you like to receive my Thought For The Week?
December 17th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
I’be been sending out an e-mail Thought For The Week for around 13 years now – short, positive aphorisms. It started with a dozen colleagues at work and the circulation has grown and grown, so that this week it reached 1,800 all around the world. You can check out all my previous Thoughts here. If […]
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My night in prison
December 16th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
This morning, I attended a meeting of the Nominet Policy Stakeholder Committee on which I represent consumer interests. The meeting took place in the Saïd Business School in Oxford and we were accommodated in the city overnight. The venue for the overnight stay was the Malmaison Hotel at Oxford Castle which used to be a […]
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How did I get into computing?
December 13th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
The short answer is: slowly. I’ve just up-dated the longer answer which you can read here.
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Family reunion in Leicester
December 11th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Today Vee and I drove up to Leicester for a pre-Christmas family reunion. There were 23 of us in total, including four children (two of whom were not born last Christmas). The older I become, the more I value and appreciate these family gatherings and my sister Silvia – in whose home we met – […]
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The famous Darlington Christmas letter
December 11th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Each year at this time, like most families, we send out Christmas cards to our friends at home and abroad. In many cases – especially those in other countries – we have not seen them in the course of 2011 and would like to share our experiences of the last 12 months. So we enclose […]
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Word of the day: Christingle
December 8th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
As a humanist, I don’t spend much time at religious events or ceremonies and, when I do, they are usually Jewish ones (so many of my closest friends are Jewish). But this week I accompanied my son and daughter-in-law to Southwark Cathedral in central London because they wanted their 11- month old daughter (who has […]
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Word of the day: persimmon
December 4th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
It looks like a cross between an apple and an orange and it tastes like a cross between a melon and a mango. It is a fruit which is very plentiful and popular in China but hardly known in the UK. Today Vee and I visited our Chinese ‘family’ in Abingdon and we finished out […]
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