We could do with a new Hoover (sorry, vacuum cleaner). The one that we have doesn’t work very well. It doesn’t pick up much fluff, dirt or dust when used in the conventional way, at an angle to the floor, pushed back and forth across the carpet, like the one in this old Shake &… Continue reading Things that don’t work very well
Back in January I wrote a couple of pieces under the heading of “Technology Sucks” (you can read the first one here, and the follow-up is here). Maybe, to avoid tempting fate, they should have been titled “Sometimes Technology Sucks”, or “Technology Woes”, like this piece. At the start of the year we were counting… Continue reading Technology Woes
During the last month I have had conversations with three different people (people I had never met before) during which the subject turned to music in the 1980s. I told the same stories three different times, which is the kind of thing that prompts me to draft a piece for this Blog. If a story… Continue reading The Smiths and The Cure
A few years ago one of my favourite cousins in Ireland had an operation to remove a “congenital wart”. We joked about how bad that sounded but we knew that it wasn’t. “Congenital” means, simply, that she was born with it. It doesn’t mean that it was big, painful or dangerous, just that she had… Continue reading Word of the week: congenital
2016 has brought us news of so many deaths, the deaths of so many famous and talented people whose work we have enjoyed for so long. Yesterday brought the saddest news of all: Caroline Aherne has died aged 52. This will be the shortest piece on this Blog and it can only echo David Baddiel’s… Continue reading Caroline Aherne RIP
The recent Oscar winner “Bridge of Spies” (Best Supporting Actor for Mark Rylance) is set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the Cold War. Part of the movie is set in Berlin, before and after the Wall between east and west is built. In one scene two characters (one of them played by… Continue reading Attention to detail in the movies
The children’s author and former Children’s Laureate Julia Donaldson is probably best known for “The Gruffalo”. We have been fans of her books for many years, with “Stick Man”, “The Snail and the Whale” and “Room on the Broom” all constant features of our children’s younger lives. When my son and daughter were 5 and… Continue reading Time Windfalls
As with yesterday’s piece about Earworms I now feel obliged to post a “Coincidence Corner” piece every month. In May’s “Coincidence Corner” I described it as my “light-hearted … monthly look at the themes, stories or references that recur if you keep your eyes and ears open, no matter what you read, watch or listen… Continue reading June’s “Coincidence Corner”
There are at least two approaches to any writing project. You can plan everything in advance so that you have a clear idea of your progress once you begin your writing, or you can just get started and see where you end up. I am taking the latter approach with this Blog, not planning too… Continue reading No Earworms for June
Differed, deferred, offered, occurred: words like this featured in my 9-year-old daughter’s Spelling List last weekend, along with swimmer, travelled and others that either repeat the last letter of a verb when used in other forms, or they don’t. It got me thinking about rules of spelling and how we generalize information as we learn.… Continue reading Differed and deferred, offered and occurred
The Compartments 