Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865) was a naval officer, captain of HMS Beagle for Darwin’s voyage to the southern hemisphere, and later an MP. He was also Governor of New Zealand and, later still, the “founding director of the Meteorological Office – the world’s first full-time professional weather forecaster”. That quote comes from the fly-leaf of my… Continue reading Word of the week: FitzRoy
Earlier this month, 1966 was one of the featured years on an edition of BBC Radio 2’s “Pick of the Pops”. I’ll be specific: it was on Saturday 6 August, and the broadcast is available, here, until 6 September 2022. It’s well worth a listen. There are many highlights, including #1s by Small Faces (“All… Continue reading “Live my days, instead of counting my years”
The current UK prime minister is Boris Johnson, still, hanging in there until the election of the new leader of the Tory Party, who will become his successor in 10 Downing Street. That’s how it works these days, and the results should be in on 5 September. There are reports that Johnson is getting booed… Continue reading Word of the week: ponce
You may have heard the old expression, “The family that prays together stays together”. I had never heard of it when I came across this alternative take, the tagline to Roger Corman’s 1970 movie “Bloody Mama”: “The family that slays together stays together”. It was the kind of low-budget cult classic that played regularly at… Continue reading “The family that quizzes together …”
Loose threads, dead ends, unfinished stories. Welcome to my world, or more specifically welcome to the world of items on this Blog that need updating. The one that comes to mind right now is here (“Summer bodies are made in spring”). It recorded my first six weeks’ worth of trips to a local swimming pool,… Continue reading The £307 Swim
When I was growing up, we had a medium-sized bookcase filled with children’s books but only a handful of novels aimed at adults. Most of the books we had were published by Ladybird or Puffin. I even managed to read a few of them: “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and the other six… Continue reading “John Paul Sarter, the famous French extensionist …”
Back in 2018 I reflected on the price of a pint of beer throughout my lifetime, in this piece. It included various milestones (50p, £1, £5 …) and concluded, “Clearly, the next barrier to be breached will be the £6 pint”. For the record, the £6 barrier has now been breached, many times. If you… Continue reading The £6 Pint
How visual are you? Can you picture things in the correct order, like colours of the rainbow, or Olympic rings? If so, congratulations. The rest of us have to make do with mnemonics and acronyms for this sort of information. For colours of the rainbow, I have always favoured the simple 7-letter word ROYGBIV (Red… Continue reading Word of the week: BRYBGR
This Blog is not a place for up-to-the-minute news analysis. There is a category called “In the news” and browsing through articles that have been categorized that way you will find more mentions of recently deceased sportsmen and pop stars than, say, current political developments. When this Blog began, in late 2015, the UK prime… Continue reading What the Daily Record said
Following on from this earlier piece (“Stuck at 3, the 1970s”) here is a list of all the artists that made it to #3 in the UK, but no higher, during the 1980s. These are releases that entered the chart between January 1980 and December 1989. Unlike my “Stuck at 2” lists (which you can… Continue reading Stuck at 3, the 1980s
The Compartments 