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Articles by Martin Roberts

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About Martin Roberts

A former motoring journalist, Martin lists amongst his greatest achievements giving up smoking. Three times. He holds to the view that growing old is not for the faint-hearted. More Posts

A sport going the way of all flesh

It is a fact of life that everything keeps evolving. In sport the elite sporting participants constantly get fitter and their core skills better, time-honoured strategic and tactical shibboleths get shredded and replaced with new ones, the global balance of power shifts. Sometimes these changes [...]

October 14, 2015 // 0 Comments

It’s raining cats and dogs

Ignoring those unfortunates who despise all animals, when it comes to domestic pets – and for these purposes I’m ignoring incarcerated beings such as snakes, lizards, tortoises, turtles, terrapins, rats, mice, stoats, ermine, hamsters, guinea pigs, goats, guinea fowl, parrots, cockatoos, [...]

September 7, 2015 // 0 Comments

It’s too late to stop now

If Life teaches us anything it is that everything around us – flesh or machine – has a built-in obsolescence, and therefore shelf-life, in terms of usefulness. Arguably, anything that does not move forwards is standing still … or indeed, potentially – depending upon the perspective you’ve [...]

August 27, 2015 // 0 Comments

Never again if I can help it

For someone who knows precious little of Britain north of Watford I have had a huge adventure these past 36 hours, namely a trip to Cleethorpes and Grimsby in north-east Lincolnshire to visit relatives. The journey up took an epic seven hours, broken only by a half-hour stop at the Newport Pagnall [...]

July 15, 2015 // 0 Comments

Over there (for a short while)

As previewed in my previous post, I spent yesterday in France in the company of the Rust’s Mr Elkins, whose famous enthusiasm for things WW1 knows little bounds and prompts in him both a boyish gushing enthusiasm and verbal diarrhoea of biblical proportions. I was aware of this before our [...]

June 30, 2015 // 0 Comments

Part of the team at last!

Today I am going on an expedition into northern France, accompanying Henry Elkins on one of his WW1 ‘recce’ research trips. He’s been engaged to guide a special family group tour at the back end of September, based around the centenary of the Battle of Loos and then the Somme in September [...]

June 29, 2015 // 0 Comments

A chance encounter (with a razor)

Back around 1970 the worst thing that any teenager could imagine happening to them was probably a case of disfigurement (e.g. an outbreak of spots) the day before an important first date. Yesterday, way past my sixtieth birthday I suffered an oldie’s equivalent when, having arranged to meet a [...]

June 10, 2015 // 0 Comments

A dissenting voice

I happened to watch The One Show on BBC1 last night, on which the guest of the day was broadcaster Clare Balding who was there to plug the Women’s Boat Race, which she has deliberately departed Channel Four Racing to present, along with its male counterpart, today. Call me old-fashioned [how many [...]

April 10, 2015 // 0 Comments

A corner of WW2 history

I’m spending a few days with my father on the south coast and yesterday – for want of anything better to do, desirous of getting some fresh hour after four hours in front of a computer screen in a quest to complete a substantial article – I suggested we visit the Tangmere Military Aviation [...]

March 20, 2015 // 0 Comments

A reunion lunch

Last week I joined an informal gathering of gents from my old school. I’m not normally one for school reunions but on this occasion I’d met the organiser about a month before and he absolutely insisted I attend. On the day in question I travelled more out of a sense of obligation than anything [...]

February 15, 2015 // 0 Comments

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