I was one of the small, merry band who for the best part of a decade struggled against impossible odds to have Charles Herbert Aslin's ground-breaking Bus Station in Derby saved and refurbished, the Bus Station Action Group.

As a result of the increased awareness of Derby's Modernist architectural heritage I have organised two led walks around Derby City Centre and slightly beyond in one of those two cases, one being the 'Art Deco Walk' around the northern part of the City Centre and the other being the 'Streamline Moderne/Coffee Bar Modernist Walk' around the southern part thereof. Furthermore, in conjunction therewith, I first designed a virtual tour of Derby's Art Deco Era architecture called 'The Virtual Deco Derby Tour' then expanded its brief to cover Post-WWII Modernist architecture, the tour being re-branded 'Derby Does Curved Corners, Delightful Deco and Magic Modernism' thereby becoming 'The Curves Man' amongst my various aliases, giving my Flickr presence its URL, 'the_curves_man'.

Unfortunately, neither of those two virtual tours exist nowadays, but I have subsequently become something of an 'accidental expert' on female Pop music of the former Soviet Bloc and - in like manner to the way in which 'The Virtual Deco Derby Tour' begat 'Derby Does Curved Corners, Delightful Deco and Magic Modernism', only now going from more general to more specific - my WordPress Blog on the subject, 'Girls Of The Golden East' begat another WordPress Blog devoted to my 'No. 1', Valérie Čižmárová entitled 'Hotlips On The Horse Tram', although in more recent times the two have been re-combined under the 'Girls Of The Golden East' umbrella at Tumblr. To add to this, there is a new WordPress Blog of mine entitled 'Lost In France', dedicated to the Pop Culture of that country of the Seventies and, furthermore, 'The Fifth Oorthuysen' on the Girl Groups and female Pop in general of The Netherlands between the Mid-Sixties and the Early Eighties.

By way of a late item of news I am delighted to report that 'The Virtual Deco Derby Tour' has been archived on the Wayback Machine as part of the wider site 'The Mad Modernist's Site Map'. Sadly, though, the same cannot be said in the case of 'Derby Does Curved Corners, Delightful Deco and Magic Modernism'.

On the themes of tours of Derby and entertainment my other led walk takes in places around Derby City Centre associated with the history of the night-time entertainment of the city and is entitled 'A Night Out in Derby...In the Afternoon???'

I am what I style myself as the 'Chief Bird-Watcher' (Admin) at the Flickr Group, 'Exotic Seventies Songbirds'.