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I don’t need an Apple Watch. I have already got a rather nice Omega which my wife bought me for my fortieth birthday and a modern waterproof and shockproof Lorus so it’s not a problem on the beach, in the gym or the shower.

I was sitting in a room in Kyoto when I first realised that you could not believe everything you saw in pictures. It was about 1987 and I was a guest of Dainippon Screen at their Japanese R&D facility, seeing their new and very expensive digital imaging system for the first time.

I have got a glass jar in my shed which is full of those essential nuts, bolts, screws and nails that men accumulate and never throw away, because they need them at some point in the future. As my wife regularly points out, the contents seem to increase rather than decrease over time so the theory appears to be flawed. When I turn the subject to her wardrobe and suggest a similarity, the conversation is brought to an abrupt halt.

My forty odd year selling career started because the Italian company Olivetti invested in training me in the early 1970s. I went from being a bank clerk to a computer equipment salesman via a month’s residential course at their UK training centre. Over the next couple of years, I spent several more months at the training centre at Olivetti’s expense, before moving into the graphic arts industry. 

We have got the Scots and the French to thank for our comprehensive UK mapping system produced by Ordnance Survey (OS), a government body charged with mapping the United Kingdom and producing printed and digital maps for business and leisure use.

Interesting figures have been released recently by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK, showing a change in the demographics last year which could have an effect on retailers and those in the packaging industry.

I have grown used to the sounds of disapproval coming from Mrs. Mulvaney behind the breakfast newspaper, usually in response to a politician’s statement, a government health warning on obesity or alcohol or indeed the latest fashion trends, but I was taken by surprise the other day when the subject of her anger was a European Union decision on value added tax (VAT).

Apple has recently reported the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company, marking another milestone in the company’s history. The US$18 billion profit in the last quarter of 2014 beats the previous record of US$15.9 billion by ExxonMobil in the second quarter of 2012, according to industry analysts, and is quite a performance for a business who started life in a garage with a couple of hippies.