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Articles by William Byford

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About William Byford

A partner in an international firm of loss adjusters, William is a keen blogger and member of the internet community. More Posts

Catching up with the past

About a week before Christmas last year, a pal of mine rang me from a function he was attending. “Hi, it’s me. You won’t believe who I’ve just met at this party. Hold the phone …” he continued before I could get a word – let alone a query – in or protest, “… I’ll put [...]

January 19, 2016 // 0 Comments

Stepping gingerly through the minefield

The issues of nostalgia, political-correctness and modern, ‘let it all hang out’, right-on, ‘any-old-how-will-do’ latitude are – quite rightly in my view – recurring themes on the Rust and I’m not the only contributor to put forward his or her viewpoint upon them. At my age, one [...]

January 7, 2016 // 0 Comments

You live and learn

Yesterday I went to my little tame garage man around the corner [definition: the excellent old-school mechanic who, unlike all main dealers, doesn’t charge a fortune and, if I call in extremis, will drop any/everything he’s doing to ‘sort me out’] for my car to have what amounts to its [...]

December 12, 2015 // 0 Comments

Enough to drive you nuts

If you asked me to sit down and produce a list of the things that can potentially annoy me about the modern world, or that have annoyed me all my life (I don’t wish to blame everything on the 21st Century), then contractors, workmen or even private postal delivery men would be right at the top [...]

December 2, 2015 // 0 Comments

The voyage of life

When I signed up as an occasional contributor to this esteemed organ one of the things that persuaded me to do so was the editorial team’s determination that it should not just be a conduit for reflections upon the 21st Century from those of us who were ‘getting on a bit’, but would also [...]

November 11, 2015 // 0 Comments

Time and tide wait for no man

It was my 64th birthday yesterday, deliberately built around a splendid lunch of boeuf bourguignon, alcohol, a log fire and watching the Rugby World Cup with my father. Shortly after midday we had a visit from a local lady who had dropped in to see my parent and cracked open a bottle of champagne [...]

November 1, 2015 // 0 Comments

How things worked out

For family reasons I had my son Barry staying with me over the weekend which was a rewarding experience as these days he lives abroad, often totally out of contact, and only makes two or three brief visits a year to these shores. By most standards he had a tough time of it as a kid. He was/is badly [...]

October 20, 2015 // 0 Comments

All’s well that ends well

I spent yesterday at the coast with my aged father. It began inauspiciously with two expeditionary failures. The first was a drive to the local town’s theatre – when we arrived there at 0915 hours we learned for the first time that its box office does not open until 1000 hours and we [...]

October 2, 2015 // 0 Comments

A day in Southampton

Yesterday I visited the Southampton Boat Show, not so much because I am a yottie but because I know people who are. A former work colleague had contacted me to announce he was attending with some pals and – if I was doing nothing else – I might like to join them. That was the case. Apart from [...]

September 16, 2015 // 0 Comments

Remembering VJ-Day

Yesterday was ‘VJ-Day plus 70 (years)’. I spent it in the company of my father, nearing ninety, who had indicated his intention to watch BBC’s live television coverage of the commemorative service at St Martins-in-the-Field attended by the Queen and Prince Philip and then the equivalent [...]

August 16, 2015 // 0 Comments

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