Tony O'Hagan - Leisure pages


Family and other interests


The Valentine Alcock Scholarship

Valentine Alcock was my half-brother. He died when taking a year out before going to Cambridge University. As well as a promising scientist, Valentine was an accomplished musician. In his memory, the family have for many years endowed a scholarship for a young person to participate in a music summer school. Since 2008, the scholarship has been more formally established as a charity with more funding and a wider remit. See the Scholarship website.

Motor Neurone Disease

MND is a terrible disease of the nervous system. Sufferers gradually lose the ability to make their muscles work. So the muscles waste away until the person can no longer speak, and eventually no longer breathe. There is no loss of mental ability, so they are aware all along of what is happening and what will happen.

Probably the best known sufferer is Professor Stephen Hawking, who had MND for many years, but he had a very slow developing form of MND: most people survive only a year or two after diagnosis. MND has touched my life particularly through watching first my stepfather and then a young academic colleague die of it.

There is no cure, although in recent years research has yielded some promising leads and at least one drug that seems to slow the disease's progression. Further research funding is desperately needed. Check out the MND Association.

Family internet links

Now on a more up-beat note, here are some contacts for my family.

My son Richard writes about sport and music, primarily in the following places: Uncle Sam Sports (American football), Blood&Mud (rugby), Betfair (cricket) and Little Indie and R2 (music). Some years ago, he wrote The Memory Blog, which many people found amusing and even quite inspiring.

My son-in-law Andrew (known to all and sundry as Pat) also blogs, but since he's a software architect or some other synomym for computer geek, it's all Greek to most of us. (That's rich, coming from a statistician!)

Other interests and hobbies

I love playing board games, and there's a great website for board game geeks. Some current favourites are Settlers of Catan, Village (with the Village Inn extension), Neptun and Ticket to Ride Europe. Alhambra and Carcassonne (with their various extensions) are also enduring friends. And some nice lighter games include Love Letter, Maori, Robo Ralley and Paris Connection. I buy games from Mad Hatter Board Games, who send out a long list of games for sale, new and second-hand, every month.

I have recently revived a childhood interest in a construction system called Brickplayer. Everyone is familiar with Lego, which began life as mainly for constructing houses and other buildings. The idea of Brickplayer is to build such things using real miniature bricks and mortar. The result is much more realistic than a Lego building, as well as being more demanding to build. I have acquired quite a lot of old Brickplayer bricks, windows, doors, etc, and I've completed a couple of substantial building projects. Maybe I'll put some pictures on this site one day!

Finally, do you love folk music? My old friend Ian Robb is a leading light in Canadian folk-song circles.


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Updated: 31 January 2021
Maintained by: Tony O'Hagan