I suppose it makes sense to tell you a bit about myself - okay, so I would think that most of you probably aren't that interested - after all, it's the stuff in this site that brings you here, rather than me - but I've had a few questions from visitors, so I thought perhaps I should introduce myself to you properly.

Firstly, they don't come much more "Portsmouth" than I do; I was born in Manor Road, back at the end of 1949, in a little flat above the rear dray entrance to the Radical Club, a few doors along from the house that is famous as having the narrowest frontage of any house in England.

It was built as an afterthought, to fill in a wedge-shaped piece of ground between two runs of house, built from either end of Manor Road, and a local developer bought up the land, when my grandfather Edgar Bedford assurehim that if there was enough space to fit a front door, then he could damned well build a house on the plot!

I went to school at George Street Junior Mixed and Infants - now Newbridge - and from there went on to the Northern Grammar School for Boys, back in the days before co-education at senior level (in Portsmouth, at least) and then went to the News, as a trainee journalist.

That little chapter of my life ended quite quickly, when I had a difference of opinion with an editor who everyone agreed was frankly totally mad, and then I had three and a bit years as a Civil Servant, first with the Tax Office (Collectors) and then with DHSS.

After that, having earlier flirted with the pop scene, managing two local bands, I became a full time disc jockey, resident at the local Mecca two nights a week and working the usual "mobile" circuit, before ending up as a partner in what became the Sound Barrier club, in Goldsmith Avenue.

Five years of that was followed by a brief career with a local music and telecommunications company, after which I ran market stalls and eventually small shop units, selling books, records, cassettes, CDs and just about anything that I thought would interest people.

Back in those days, I played a lot of sport, whenever I could find the opportunity and I joined Purbrook Cricket Club in 1976, principally as a bowler, although I stuck a few balls in the stream up at Purbrook Heath.

Much later, I came back to the club as an umpire and stood for three seasons, until back problems forced me to give that up and retire to the bar and reminiscences fuelled by the odd jar of the amber nectar.

I still have the bookshop I founded, back in 1985, which started in Cosham, moved to the Tricorn for more than a decade and has now been in London Road, opposite the end of Chichester Road, for the past 14 years, or thereabouts.

The founding of InterCash, back in 1993, came about a bit by chance, but it worked well and over the years we've built it up, so that now we have seven branches, in Portsmouth, Southsea, Waterlooville, Chichester and Winchester.

By and large, although I'm supposed to be head of the company, in reality there isn't often much for me to do; good managers and a sound management structure means that InterCash would probably run just as smoothly if I was abducted by aliens and not dropped back to earth for ten years.

So, for five years we ran the Portsmouth Post, which was fantastically received by its readers - probably about 60,000 of them at the peak - but which advertisers just couldn't be persuaded to support as it deserved and finally, in 2007, I had to bow to the inevitable and close it, although we do keep a small on-line version going ... after a fashion!

And now there's this site and the opportunity to make use of my two favourite attributes - my love of history and research and my "skills" and experience as a writer.

I still live in Portsmouth, in the 1897 house in Gladys Avenue that my parents bought, back in 1960 and which, a year from now, in August 2010, will have been the family "pile" for half a century. It'll be my daughter's own house one day, and my granddaughters after that, I hope, so maybe they can take it through to the century mark ...

Most of the time, I can work from home, as I have a fully connected office on the top floor, which I converted from the roof space, in 1999, but it's close enough so that I can pop down to our head office, on the corner of Stubbington Avenue, or stroll a bit further to the bookshop and to The Tap next door to it!

I have one daughter, who lives with me at the moment, together with her daughter, whilst my stepdaughter and her husband bought the house next door, two summers ago - and guess who got involved in refurbishing that?!

I have two "step-grandchildren" living there as well, my granddaughter, who helps out in the bookshop at weekends and during holidays, and my grandson, who is mostly away now, having joined the army earlier this year.

Oh, and we have a "time-share" cat, which is theirs, but spends most of her time between meals in our place!

And that's about it, for now at least. If I can think of anything else, I'll add it later, but I think I'll mostly be concentrating on the history of Portsmouth for the present, rather than yours truly's part in it!

Cheers for now,

Bob