Fosbury Flopping

Strangely, my Olympic high jump career never took off, despite clearing an impressive 1.20m using the Fosbury Flop at school in the early 1980s.

Fearsome Teen Gang

From the archives, a rare glimpse of a notorious gang that roamed the woods of Solihull in the 1980s.

Improvising a Spoon

Ever have a yoghurt but no spoon? The solution is simple - mold the foil lid into your very own handmade spoon. Here's my attempt.

Fixing a Radio with the Inverse Square Law

My trusty semidigital radio is gradually falling into disrepair, but it can still perform its fundamental task of turning radio waves into sound. But with the volume dial being permanently stuck on maximum, I'm forced to improvise to quieten it. Luckily studying physics at university has taught me the inverse square law, whereby doubling the distance from the source of a sound will quarter the intensity. So when my radio is 1 metre away and is ten times louder than I want it, whipping out my calculator it tells me that the radio needs to be placed on a table 3.16227 metres away. How convenient is that !

Classic Lego Spaceship

This was our household's first Lego spaceship, from circa 1979.