RIP Moonwalker Alan Bean who sadly passed away yesterday, May 26th 2018. Alan Bean was the first astronaut I ever met. The most warm, personable and the funniest. I remember him talking…
-
-
OK, let’s get this out of the way. This holiday is not what it was supposed to be. We had hired a cameprvan, a classic VW to nomadically wander the Scottish highlands,…
-
What do you do if you fail the eyesight test for the US Air Force, then fail the eyesight test for the US Navy? You go straight over their heads and join…
-
Under siege. That’s how I would class any visit to Prague. A city of a hundred spires and home to amazing Gothic architecture untouched by the grubby hands of Communist block buildings…
-
You read that right, Prague has a sex machines museum. How nice of Prague to name a museum after me, sex machine is my middle name. The saucy shenanigans and coitus contraptions…
-
Much to Mrs Cook’s disappointment, I’m not very good with my hands, so we’ve come to get some instruction. Except this time I’ll also be getting them wet and dirty at a…
-
They say that electric vehicles are the future so we’ve come to find out with a sedate Segway adventure. To call it a Segway safari would be a bit of a stretch, for…
-
Just back from a 3 day trip to the ridiculously under-priced eastern Europe, this time in Hungary for a Budapest city break. Savvy people that you are, or for those that have picked…
-
I was 13 years old in 1984, the Cold War was still years away from thawing, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative had been announced the year before, and Space Shuttle Challenger is launched…
-
On the 1st of November, we had to let go of Elvis, our handsome 21 year old cat. He’s a big loss, an absolute character. Its going to be strange not to…
-
Eeee by eck. We’ve a couple of days off from that nasty four letter word so we’ve come up to the North Yorkshire Dales (t’yorkshire) for some extreme dog walking. Land of flat…
-
It’s fair to say that if you don’t know your Klingons from your Quarks then the Star Trek Exhibition in Blackpool is not for you. If however you like star trekking across…
-
I can count on two fingers the amount of times I’ve been to Blackpool, both ended in tears. Once in 1977 at a Dr Who exhibition, I ran out screaming in sheer terror…
-
In April 1972, Apollo 16 was the tenth manned flight in the Apollo program, leaving the cradle of Planet Earth for another world. Onboard that spacecraft, the Lunar Module Orion undocked from the Command…
-
Jerry Bostick is a former NASA flight controller who worked in Mission Control during the golden age of spaceflight on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programmes, I’m meeting Jerry Bostick at the National…
-
It is described as “60 seconds of fun” which would seem quite appropriate as this experience is to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Mrs Cook states that most experiences with me only last…
-
Being a bit of an old fossil myself, I find nothing more interesting than looking at other old fossils so I’m at Wollaton Hall (yes, Bruce Wayne’s house in Batman) to see some…
-
Eye spy with the London Eye, something beginning with C. Wrong. It’s the Capital and we are in it, jolly old London town. When a man is tired of London, he is tired…
-
Weird things in jars. That’s how best to describe the Grant Museum of Zoology. Not for the squeamish, this offbeat museum in London is one of the oldest natural history museums in…
-
Madame Tussauds is an utter freak show. I’m not talking about the waxworks inside, or the queue outside of thousand of thronging visitors lined up like dummies who haven’t booked online to…