Mike Packwood

It's a shame that Northampton no longer has its Herald and Post free newspaper. It closed its doors, or rather had its doors closed for it in 2016 by Trinity Mirror, who ended up being its final custodian. Its closure was inevitable. The newspaper marketplace has changed beyond recognition since the Post, as it what originally called, first hit the streets in the mid 70's, and its true to say that it had never been the same since it moved from private ownership - owned by people who launched and nurtured it, to being just another very small cog in a mammoth corporate wheel (of misfortune). The second home of Post Newspapers: Newspaper House in Derngate I began my newspaper career at the Post in the late 70's as a paper boy and then as a van driver (part tine while still attempting to be a pop-star, details of which you'll find elsewhere on this blog). I think I joined full time about 5 years into the life of the Post. It had begun as a paid for title competing wit...

Here we are at the St Fagans National History museum near Cardiff with Amy and her two lads, Ethan and Dylan. Somehow I've managed to live in Cardiff for 25 years without ever visiting and its only 5 mins up the road, so this visit was well overdue and well worth it.      

No boxer tries to win on points. Everyone goes for the haymaker. As far as I’m aware this is the only sport where the deliberate intention is to cause potentially fatal brain damage to your opponent - because  that’s what a knock-out can do. Twenty five years ago I read an article in a local newspaper where Nicky Piper’s wife, when asked about her opinion of the dangers of her husband’s profession (he was a well-regarded middleweight boxer at the time) said that “it’s safer than crossing the road”. She may have been joking, but in those pre internet or social media days, that was the only occasions I’ve ever felt the need to write to a newspaper with a strongly worded letter. To vent my spleen! Recently the Scottish boxer Mike Towell died following a bout and of course, those  who know far more about boxing than me will be aware of the probably countless other boxers who have been killed either in the ring, following bouts, or who over the years have succumbed to bo...

Here we are on the Balmoral taking a trip around the Severn estuary...from Penartth to Clevedon, on to Bristol and then up and under the two Severn crossings and back to Penarth. Wonderful day out on a fascinating ship.