Early in 2018 I posted this piece about body weight. It recorded the fluctuations in my own weight using three different measurements (stones, pounds, kilos) and noted how I lost a couple of stone in 2012, by swimming most days and eating less. Apart from the year up to summer 2013 I have generally been… Continue reading Outweighed by my children
I drive a French car. I have always driven French cars. So did my mother. Back in the 1970s, before I was old enough to drive, she bought her first car from the long-gone Fred Guy garage in King Street Hammersmith. It was a two-year-old Renault 6, which was replaced by a new Renault 6… Continue reading They really can’t get the parts
How are your Sunday evenings? Is there a routine built around returning to school or work the following morning? Does the TV schedule play a significant part in your Sunday nights? In our household, there are two series that take up our time on Sunday evenings: the “Strictly Come Dancing” results show during the autumn, right through to… Continue reading The new Sunday evening routine
Here’s the first part of my favourite joke from recent years: “Why did the vegan cross the road?” I was asked this by a very polite, well-brought up woman in her 30s, who I have known since she was 3. Immediately after asking me the question she looked worried and said, “Oh, you’re not a vegan are you?”, as… Continue reading Vegans and Oxbridge Graduates
These “Word of the week” pieces have become rather less frequent in recent months, for no particular reason. I have drafted several posts without finalizing them, but there are still over 170 finished pieces (and over 100,000 words of text) dotted throughout this site about words that have been in the news or come to… Continue reading Word of the week: crucify
Here’s a catchphrase I first heard in the 1990s and use from time to time: “You want to take more water with it”. You might need to change the pronoun and verb forms as appropriate. I can pinpoint the date and place where I first heard it: St Patrick’s Day 1993, near our local church.… Continue reading “You want to take more water with it”
Uno, as you probably know, represents the number one in at least two languages (Spanish and Italian are the ones that I am familiar with). It is used specifically for nouns that take the masculine form, though this is not always straightforward. The word for a car is masculine in Spanish (“coche”) but feminine in… Continue reading Word of the week: Uno
Until this week I had had the same dentist for 25 years. He is now cutting back his hours, moving towards retirement and taking on only private work. If I wanted to continue with him as my dentist, I would have to go private, not on the NHS. 25 years is, by a long way,… Continue reading A New Dentist
The Compartments 