Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my mother’s death. I wrote about the anniversary a year ago, in this piece. This year we followed a slightly different pattern to previous years. We prepared for the anniversary by planting some flowers the day before. It was the first time that my children have helped out with… Continue reading Another Anniversary Day
A short “Word of the Week” today: kakistocracy, which means rule by those who are worst, or least suitable. It came up last week in a question on ITV’s quiz show “The Chase”. This definition from dictionary.com tells us that it was first coined in 1829 as “government by the worst element of a society,”… Continue reading Word of the week: kakistocracy
Five years ago today I read this article (“The Insider’s Guide to Cancer Prevention) in the Guardian’s Saturday edition. I am glad to see that it’s still available online. It’s worth a few minutes of your time. Reading it prompted me to make one small daily change in my life. I am now nearly the… Continue reading Five years of aspirin
Earlier this year my daughter and I were driving past a pub called The Plough. I asked if she knew how to pronounce it, and what the word meant. She guessed, quite understandably, that it’s pronounced “pluff”, to rhyme with rough. (In fact it rhymes with “cow” or “now”, as I’m sure you know.) She… Continue reading Word of the week: plough
“Is there a point to all this?” This question has not emerged from some deep existential reflection, nor from a review of the pieces posted on this Blog so far. It’s a line from a French movie I saw in the 1980s, which comes to mind every now and then. Back then, without search engines,… Continue reading “Is there a point to all this?”
Our viewing habits remain the same. The quiz shows mentioned in last month’s round-up of recent trivia are still on series record, and my children and I watch many of them together. “Pointless” has been part of our family viewing for many years, and now so is “The Chase”. My 12-year-old son has recently become… Continue reading A trivia round-up for March 2017
The word “nutter” is never far from my mind. I used it last June in this piece (“Please don’t tell me the names of the murderers”); more about that later. I have been meaning to draft a Word of the Week piece about it for a while. Before last week’s events here in London my… Continue reading Word of the week: nutter
Since the start of the year I have been thinking even more than usual about trivia, quizzes and game shows. I posted a round-up of recent trivia in February and have now become a regular watcher of “The Chase”, to accompany the long-standing slots in my viewing habits taken by “Pointless”, “Only Connect”, “Mastermind” and… Continue reading Peri-Peri Chicken in a sandwich? Really?
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. It commemorates, as you may know, the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary that she is “with child”. For many years now we have been able to discuss this event with a memory from my daughter’s first Nativity Play at her primary school. The boy chosen to… Continue reading “Mary! You’re gonna have a baby!”
Recently, while I was hunched over a spreadsheet on my laptop at the kitchen table, my 10-year-old daughter asked, “Is that Excel?” It was. “Can I show you something?” she asked. In a blank cell, in a new blank workbook, she typed the following: =1+1 When she pressed Return the number 2 appeared in the… Continue reading Word of the week: BODMAS
