New Year’s Eve 2019. Tomorrow we begin a whole new decade, the 20s, or the 2020s. I don’t recall thinking too much about decades coming to an end on previoius New Year’s Eve’s. We made a big deal of 31 December 1999, but that was the end of a millennium, not just the end of… Continue reading End-of-the-decade memories, and some calculations
Pho, as you may know, is a Vietnamese dish, defined by the Cambridge Dictionary website as “a type of soup … usually containing noodles (= long, thin strips made from flour, water, and often egg) and small pieces of meat”. Pho is also the name of a chain of restaurants here in the UK, describing… Continue reading Word of the week: pho
On Boxing Day 2016 my brother and I went on a local pub crawl. It was something we had talked about doing when we were teenagers, but never got around to it. You can read about it here. On Boxing Day 2017 we went on another crawl (as noted in this piece), but we didn’t… Continue reading The Brentford FC pub crawl, postponed
Merry Christmas to you. For the first time since this Blog was set up, over four years ago, I am drafting words on a Christmas morning. The children (aged 13 and 15) have opened all their presents. BBC adaptations of Julia Donaldson books have been playing in the background (“Stick Man”, followed by “Zog”) and… Continue reading Christmas Day, the new New Year’s Eve
Following on from this piece at the start of the year and this one from August, here’s another set of photos showing what remains after a pint of beer and a packet of crisps have been dealt with. They were taken at various bars in London. The concept of “The 4-Ring Man” was originally covered… Continue reading The 4-Ring Man, in pictures (Part 3, Oct-Dec 2019)
Here we are, a week and a day before Christmas. You have probably heard many seasonal songs already, among them “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl. It was Stuck at 2 here in the UK in 1987, kept off the top spot at Christmas by the Pet Shop Boys version of… Continue reading “The Rare Old Mountain Dew”
Just over four years ago, in December 2015, I took my first tentative steps in the world of Blogging with this piece about my local bookshop. The piece is short, a mere 162 words, and it notes that a section of the shop was called “Smart Thinking”. This appeared to be a fairly new category,… Continue reading No more “Self Help” at the bookshop
Every now and then on this Blog I reflect on subscriptions, most recently in this piece about Netflix (June 2019). As predicted, at the end of our free trial month we continued to subscribe to the service, and still do. Unlike some of the services that I have subscribed to, for month after month without… Continue reading Word of the week: Prime
Last week there was a seasonal news story about hangover cures. I caught it on Breakfast TV rather than in print, and offer this link, from the “Birmingham Live” website, with the details. Titled “Ultimate hangover cure discovered by boffins in time for Christmas party season” it suggests these ingredients: 65% pear juice, 25% lime… Continue reading The perfect hangover recipe
Here, for the fifth successive month on this Blog, is a screenshot from the BBC website showing Leeds United at the top of the Championship, the second tier of English football. As mentioned in many earlier pieces, like this one from November, I have followed Leeds since childhood, and I have timed these regular posts… Continue reading This month’s screenshot showing Leeds United top of the Championship
The Compartments 