The Richard Spooner Column: An old dog 's new tricks�

I was going to write this week about how we are ruled by technology, a subject you may have heard me refer to previously.

However, every ounce of my creativity had been drained by having to fill in my company expenses for December, 2021.

So I turned to a couple of old journalistic tricks. On rainy days with nothing going on, hacks across the land woud scour local telephone directories for people with the same name as famous or notorious characters.

Arthur Scargill was a favourite and I remember a northern news agency finding a local person who shared his name with the notorious firebrand miners ' leader.

Anyway, no such luck when I checked among the Chamber membership, except there were a couple of David Frosts who were once in our orbit.

Another journalistic wheeze, especially at the end of the year, was to look at anniversaries - checking out what went on 100 years ago in Birmingham, that sort of thing.

So I decided to look back at the Spooner column. We launched it on 4 January, 2018 - 172 columns ago. The first column was about how it was launched in my name and the reasons for it.

So rather than go over all that old ground, I looked at column No 2. In it I lamented the loss some years earlier of Ronnie Scott 's jazz club on Broad Street and its conversion into a lap dancing club.

But it allowed me the luxury of celebrating a renaissance of culture in Birmingham in the previous year, including the continued success of Birmingham Jazz Festival, which we hope can return in its former glory this year.

Then I turned to 3 January, 2019. The topic on that day was a survey on whether employees should be allowed to work a four-day week or work at home (little did we know what was just around the corner).

I recalled that I once enjoyed a four-day week, well nights really. That was fine but it meant starting work on Sundays and being in the office from 3pm to 3am. I can honestly say I didn 't know whether I was coming or going, and I never mastered the art of what to eat when.

On 7, January, 2020, I mused about a New Year 's email I had received from a kindly gentleman in East Africa informing that I was entitled to nearly four million US dollars languishing an inheritance fund. All I had to do was send him my bank accounts details and the money would be transferred in the blinking of an eye. I sent him details of my Bank of Mickey Mouse account.

By 7 January, 2021, we were, of course, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic but we found a glimmer of good news. Many companies, like those manufacturing testing kits and masks were flourishing alongside many logistics businesses.

So as we enter 2022 with much hope and expectation of things returning to near normal, I wonder what we will be writing about in this column in January, 2023.

Anyway, there you are. Column 172 written when there wasn 't a thought in my head half-an-hour ago. An old dog can teach new tricks�and I 'll come back to technology another time.

JL