It’s not so much that I am obsessed with celebrity, and I have no illusions about my own sense of impact on history.
But I am fascinated at observing the way in which I can perceive the threads of connection between people and places.
There is great comfort to be had from a sense that I have been wrapped in these threads, and though it is clearly the case that we are all in some way connected to these threads and by these threads to everything, it is not necessarily the case that we are aware of those threads that bind us.
I suppose this particular blog is partly my reminiscing about the way in which I have been fortunate to have uncovered and become aware of some of these threads, and partly a means of finding some sense of meaning that I have gained from the whole process.
If I ever try to name drop about some of the people that I have met or worked with, more often than not other people do not know who I am talking about.
This only amuses me is, and perhaps underlines the fact that I have spent my life in a rarefied not to say mysterious world.
But it has been a world nevertheless connected to so many things.
This morning, as I was beginning to contemplate what I might write about, one of my starting points was to think of a title, such as why Les Miserables is such a favourite of mine.
Most recently, I am meaning the 25th anniversary film that Cameron Mackintosh commissioned to celebrate this important anniversary of his stage adaptation.
I did once see the staged adaptation, and it may have been in the 1980s, since I remember attending with my wife. Or at least the woman that was to become my wife.
I saw it at the Prince Edward Theatre on Drury Lane in theatre land.
When I was at university I lived only 30 minutes walk or so from Drury Lane, when I lived in Gower Street as a student. I was a student at University College London, the godless college in Gower Street.
Strangely enough, it was from an old-fashioned theatrical costumier close to here that I first obtained moustache wax, when in my early 20s I first attempted to grow a relaxed moustache.
I have only one photograph from that time, the identity photograph from my London tube ticket.
I am currently attempting my second waxed moustache, and after much stress about whether or not I would be able to find another supplier for moustache wax, I searched on Amazon and was amazed at how many suppliers there were to be found.
This is an extraordinary reminder of how times have changed. It would have been unfixable in the early 1980s to use the Internet to shop for this kind of product, and yet today we can almost take it for granted.
I was even able to get some tips on how to wax my moustache from YouTube. Another unthinkable thing.
And of course having thought of Les Miserables, I made the connection with syndicalism.
Perhaps not everyone might have made this collection, but since my first working years were spent building a cooperative business, for me the link from those last scenes in the film where idealistic young men are talking about the blood of angry men and black, the colour of ages past.
Black and red are the colours of the anarchist flag.
Although I would not consider myself an anarchist, I would consider myself a syndicalist. And the two have a great deal in common.
Much of the Basque region in Spain has been the focus of significant industrial co-operatives, and I once owned a washing machine manufactured in one such business.
Working in eight co-operatives context has been an important part of my early experience, and indeed made me aware of some significant historical threads.
So for example the premises within which we operated a conference centre providing residential facilities for up to 40 people were provided to us at a peppercorn rent by a Christian socialist named Tom Lupton whose family had owned the Beechwood estate since Victorian times.
They had been manufacturers of fine woollen carriage cloth, and this substantial estate on the edge of Leeds was where they lived, in fairly grand style.
Examples of their cloth had been exhibited at the great exhibition in 1851.
Tom Lupton trained as an architect, and became a manufacturer of furniture. He eventually sold his furniture business to Terence Conran when that entrepreneur was building the Habitat empire, and since he lived in Oxfordshire he had no use for the Beechwood estate that he inherited from two spinster aunts in 1972.
As a Christian socialist, Tom Lupton was motivated to ensure that this resource was made available to pursue objectives that he had some belief in.
And so I became aware of the way in which Christian Socialists like him have had an important influence in the UK.
For example, the Scott Bader Commonwealth, located I believe somewhere close to Middlesbrough, is a chemical factory making injection moulding chemicals. The owner of the factory, Scott Bader, gave the entire factory to his workforce, in perpetuity, in the 1950s.
It is one of few examples of industrial cooperation in the UK, where co-operatives have tended to be consumer co-operatives.
Later, when I was working as the education officer for Opera North in Leeds, I became involved in a project to help the co-operative movement celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Rochdale Pioneers.
This took place at a national centre owned by the co-operative movement nationally, located in Staffordshire.
Strange how threads can link up on themselves, and I found myself in a unique position to appreciate what I was helping to celebrate by virtue of my own history.
It was whilst working at Opera North that I had the opportunity to meet and work with an extraordinary range of creative people, broadening my own horizons substantially.
Opera was not an art form that I had ever previously experienced, but for five years, I had the opportunity to see as many shows as I could, and never had to pay a thing.
I even had the opportunity to see work at other opera houses, including Glyndebourne and English National Opera, since the education officers at all of these institutions formed a small but unique network.
Thus I got to go to Glyndebourne twice, and though I did not possess a dinner suit, working for Opera North meant that I was able to be kitted out with a very fine dinner suit thanks to the wardrobe department.
And so it is that I have met many of the most important composers working in the 20th century, often only at those kind of drinks parties that take place when a production opens.
But nevertheless, to someone like myself interested in those threads of history, I have had a field day.
I met Sir Michael Tippett during the opera lost production of his last opera, New Year.
He was in his 90s and almost blind, but still composing.
As a conscientious objector, he was imprisoned for his beliefs during the Second World War.
Later, working as the development director for the Scottish chamber Orchestra, I would work closely with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, master of the Queens music, organising his international young composers course on his island home of Orkney.
And so in the course of my work, I have had dinner with the likes of Arnold Wesker, at the Cheltenham Festival, and gave Sophie Dahl her acting debut in Goldilocks and the three Bears.
When I tell people that I have had dinner with Sophie Dahl I usually omit to mention that another dozen people were at the table with us, including her mother.
But that is the nature of personal experience, you can choose what you wish to include in any anecdotes.
Where I now live in Worthing in West Sussex is just across the road from the Queen Alexandra Hospital home for soldiers, and every year this important place has an open day.
I have met Dame Vera Lynn at the open day twice now, and because I included a short story about meeting with her at the hospital, in a special edition of my first collection of poems, a copy of this collection has been included in the local history collection of West Sussex county council, where it is rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Balzac, and Kipling.
I must have no illusions about the reason for my poems being included in this prestigious selection, it is the importance of the hospital and of its connection with Dame Vera Lynn, but it is nice to be thus included.
