John Hall spent many years in the civil service before becoming a professional writer specialising in crime fiction. His book Death of a Collector, introducing Freddie Darnborough, won the Sherlock magazine's competition for the best new fictional detective. Freddie has since appeared in short stories and a couple of radio plays. John's other favourite fictional detectives are Peter Wimsey (before he married that dreadful woman!), Poirot, and of course Sherlock Holmes.John has a long association with the Sherlock Holmes world, but has other interests as well, including a large collection of tobacco pipes. John is a member of The international Pipe Smokers' Hall of Fame.

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As we age our outlook on life changes. Throughout our carefree youth and busy adult years, working, producing, and rearing future generations, our focus is on just that, the here and now. We don't think that our parents are watching and enjoying for the second time what we are seeing as a whole new life experience.Now that my youth and working years are done and the whole new life experience of retirement is unfolding before me I have time to reflect. A few years ago I enjoyed writing the memoirs of my early working life in "Bricks and Mortar" and now I have taken to writing some of the precious memories of my youth. I hope that my jottings of a time in my formative years might also awaken your own memories of a similar era in your own life and if so then that is my gift to you. A time without responsibility or care, when life was all before us, and tomorrow was a world away. We lived for the here and now; days were long and weeks longer.I hope you enjoy my words as much as I have enjoyed writing them.