Neil Hopcroft

Somewhere in the dim and distant past, there was a music and cricket festival.

I went to visit some Roman remains – unfortunately I have no record of where this was.

We took a day out from Oxford to visit Blenheim Palace, where we spent a disproprotionate amount of time lost in the maze.

My cousin had his wedding on his birthday, complete with the traditional bumps.

I thought he’d turn up sooner or later, Blue Neil. He’s not looking quite so blue these days. Or, indeed, particularly happy about having his picture taken.

Early 2002 and this is my first selfie – one of very few I have ever taken. A bunch of us went skiing and I was looking for sunglasses – there weren’t any mirrors but I had my camera. Thus a craze was born.

This poor thing survived my time in London and came with me to Oxford. It blew an engine, which I suspect was caused by a botched cambelt change (by a main dealer, no less) but could not prove. This had the weird symptom of being fine all the time the revs were over 4k, but let it drop and it would stall. That made for a particularly interesting journey through Nottingham city centre.

The second block sprang an oil leak that was utterly insatiable and eventually led to its demise.

If you ever wondered why I was called smooth Neil, meet Spiky. More importantly I’m actually Neil number 4 – Number 1 might turn up at some point but two and three are consigned to history now.

A perfectly fitting 5×5 Hula Hoop and Kraft Cheese sandwich. The breakfast of kings.

This is one of the flats I lived in in London, the nicer of them, it was in Finchley, a few minutes walk from the Tube station. I didn’t really like living in London much, there’s a lot of angry people and it kinda makes you angry too. There are some things I miss, like being able to go anywhere because you’ve got a travelcard, but I still kept my car and escaped when I could.