I was at a funeral the week before last. It was in Harlesden, a place I had not visited for over 20 years. The deceased was the sister of an old college friend. I had invited him to something last month but he couldn’t make it. His sister was very ill, and she died at… Continue reading A funeral changes everything
Two weeks ago I began to draft a piece about the previous weekend’s sport, but didn’t finalize it. It recorded a sporting weekend where every result went the way I wanted. England won the UEFA European Under-21 Championship with a 1-0 win against Spain on the Saturday evening (8 July). That match also featured a… Continue reading Two Sporting Sundays (July 2023)
Following on from two earlier pieces (most recently this one), here are another 10 jokes from Tony Blackburn’s “Sounds of the 60s” show on Radio 2. Most of them come from the few minutes just before 8am on the live broadcasts when he and Dermot O’Leary discuss their week. We heard about a trip to… Continue reading Tony and Dermot, a third selection of jokes
Pakie, Packy or Packie, is a diminutive form of the name Patrick. Patrick, as I’m sure you know, is one of the most popular boys’ names in Ireland, more usually abbreviated to Paddy or Pat. I had two uncles baptised with the name of Patrick. My father’s brother was known as Paddy, and the man… Continue reading Word of the week: Pakie
How much do you remember about your dreams? How many can you recall, right now? During a recent conversation a friend was telling us about a very strange dream that he had had. He could recall it vividly, a few days later. As I listened I couldn’t think of any recent dreams. There are themes… Continue reading The scariest dream I ever had
[Contains swear words] In the late 1980s, for reasons I will not go into right now, I drove with my father to a place near Queens Park, London NW6. I followed what had become a familiar route: up Wood Lane (W12), right at the Pavilion (a pub), past the North Pole (another pub) and on… Continue reading A few of the places where my father worked
Last year, in this piece, I listed all the Double A Sided singles that made it to the top of the UK chart. There were 47 different releases in the list, the last of them in 2007. There are unlikely to be any more now that the singles charts are based primarily on streaming. Double… Continue reading The 4 EPs that made it to #1
The Compartments 