Welcome

John Drake

Welcome to my blog.

I use it to post random thoughts on music, cinema, sport, TV and anything else that occupies my mind from time to time.

It’s really an exercise in encouraging myself to write more often. If anyone chooses to read it, that’s a bonus, but not a requirement.

The only thing any of this represents is me. My personal thoughts, views, opinions, musings etc. No one else is to blame.

So who am I?

I was born in Bradford in 1966, raised and lived in the same city until 2022, when I made the big (for me) move to the Yorkshire Dales town of Settle which I now call home.

I left school at 16 with a bunch of O-Levels and a burning desire to become an industrial chemist, and my first job was at Allied Colloids. After two years, that burning desire was extinguished and I moved behind a desk in the Civil Service, working as a tax man for 8 years until I’d also had enough of that and quit to visit Australia for an unspecified amount of time that turned out to be three months.

Returning to Old Blighty and a short period of unemployment, I ended up at BT, doing various things for another 8 years, until I eventually settled into a job I stuck at for longer than 8 years, working as a journalist amongst other things for a company called League Publications Ltd in Brighouse, West Yorkshire.

I’ve done a couple of stints as editor on Rugby League World Magazine and I’m the technical guy who keeps the Total Rugby League website up and running – also the mild-mannered, endlessly patient head honcho of the Total Rugby League message board moderating team.

I’m a Rugby League supporter, and my team is Bradford Bulls. I enjoyed the glory days of Bullmania, but I was around a while before that when they used to be called Bradford Northern and weren’t very good. These things go in cycles.

I am a fan of the TV show Doctor Who, and though I still own a long scarf I bought at the Blackpool Exhibition in 1981 for the outrageous sum of £7 in a rush of youthful enthusiasm, I have never worn it in an attempt to pretend I was Tom Baker. There is only one Tom Baker. Accept no imitations.

I launched my own business called SettleTech in 2022 and in 2024 I’ll be taking on a new voluntary role as Editor of Settle Community News.

There are other things I could tell you about myself, but I’m not going to. Not right here, right now at any rate. Perhaps if you bookmark the blog and come back again later, I’ll have written something else. It’s the not knowing that keeps life that little bit more interesting.

Thanks for dropping by anyway.

John