It’s not big, and it’s not clever — The incident is so far back in time, it’s like looking down the wrong end of a telescope, for while the image is distant, it is vividly clear. This is probably because how I occupied myself that afternoon was well outside the usual happenings on a school day. …

Big names were very forthcoming — One summer, which seems like a few weeks ago, but was actually a decade and a half ago, I was taken on at the marketing company Ahh! Ingenious to work as the editor of a new magazine, the intended readership of which were members of a local business forum. With…

What I wrote, earned, and how I managed my time — I didn’t have a large body of work to show off my talent when I sent away a solitary sample of my writing in response to a call for writers. Pretty much the only work I’d had published at that stage were several articles in a Newcastle United fanzine. …

They couldn’t be improved upon Eponymous products and places are all around us. These days, those participating in the high jump invariably sail over the bar via the Fosbury flop, a jumping style named after the recently departed James Fosbury. Here in the UK, we don’t vacuum the floor, but…

How to unravel those devilish clues — The first cryptic crossword I attempted was in a newspaper, and at the time I didn’t even know what the word meant concerning a crossword. But, I delved straight in, confident that I’d at least be able to pen in some answers. How wrong I was. It wasn’t just that…

Add pizzazz to your presentations — While looking through an old documents folder in search of articles that may be candidates for resurrection, I came across a piece I wrote years ago that shows how to create a timeline in Excel. I followed my instructions to make sure the process still works, and I’m happy to…

It wasn’t great — Continuing my investigation into the workings of ChatGPT, I wondered how effective it would be at writing the closing line of a limerick. To find out, I rustled up ten nonsense rhymes that were minus their closing lines. …

Can you tell which is which? — Embarking on further exploration of ChatGPT, and what it can do, I decided to devise a little exercise to see how my own writing would compare to that generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) when we were given the same brief. Here are the instructions I entered. In 300 words or…

Use that pesky function to your advantage — Spare a thought for poor old Ted, a reporter for a travel magazine. Ted’s assignments are somewhat more sedate than those of his fictional counterparts like Lois Lane and Tin Tin; you are more likely to find Ted reporting on a flower show than a political scandal or an audacious…