Earlier this month I wrote about the phrase “I remember when this was all fields”, as part of this piece. I have lived in the same part of West London for my entire life but do not remember when it was all fields. I do, however, remember when we had record shops, video rental stores… Continue reading Where have all the petrol stations gone?
The term “quadratic equation” might provoke fear in anyone who didn’t enjoy maths at school. I did enjoy maths at school, more so than my brother or sister, and over the years have used some straightforward multiplications to try and take some of the fear out of quadratic equations. It started with my older brother,… Continue reading Fun with quadratic equations
A trencherman is someone who enjoys food, a hearty eater. An archaic meaning of the word is someone who sponges off others, a parasite. I finally looked it up today, having come across it over the years and not been in a position to do so, most recently while reading Marcus Berkmann’s “A matter of… Continue reading Word of the week: trencherman
There hasn’t been a strike by local refuse collectors (or bin-men as we used to call them) for many years. I can’t remember the last one in our corner of West London; 30 years ago, maybe more. Occasionally in those intervening decades there have been strikes elsewhere in the UK and they will make the… Continue reading “The rubbish is piling up in the street”
During the general knowledge round on last Friday’s “Mastermind” John Humphrys asked the following question: Which word, now generally used to mean paralysed by fear, actually means turned to stone? The answer (and I’ve rather given it away with the title of this piece) is “petrified”. I’ve just checked the episode again. I thought that… Continue reading Word of the week: petrified
I have speculated more than once in these posts about people’s ability to remember the words to songs. There’s a memory from my 20s here, speculation about whether there’s a link between people’s ability to remember jokes and lyrics here and this more recent piece looks at songs that I have heard thousands of times… Continue reading Lyrics that stick and lyrics that don’t
Geography doesn’t stand still. When I was a boy the Soviet Union (or USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) counted as one country with one capital city (Moscow). After the break-up of the Soviet Union, it split into many more countries. How many, exactly? I didn’t know until very recently so looked it up.… Continue reading A mnemonic for the former Soviet Union
Breakonium is, according to Nicholas Lezard in this recent piece in the New Statesman, “the most fragile substance on Earth”. I read the piece and laughed aloud, not for the first time when reading one of his Down and Out in London columns, and have been using the word breakonium ever since. It’s not an… Continue reading Word of the week: breakonium
Maybe I’m getting old. I have taken to repeating some of the phrases that old people have traditionally used about young people, and about how the world has changed, and my use of these phrases is not always for comic effect. “That’s not music, that’s just noise” is probably the closest to home. I first… Continue reading “That’s not music, that’s just noise” (and similar phrases)
Last year I wrote a few “Coincidence Corner” pieces, light-hearted reviews of the themes, stories or references that recur if you keep your eyes and ears open, no matter what you read, watch or listen to. If you’re not finding “coincidences” it might be a sign that you’re not reading, watching or listening to much… Continue reading A few little coincidences for January
