Here are the questions and answers for the current series of ITV quiz show “Tenable”, episodes broadcast between Monday 21 and Friday 25 October 2019, Series 4 Episodes 6-10 (S4Ep6, S4Ep7 and so on). The format here is the same as in earlier pieces such as this one from last week: a list of the… Continue reading “Tenable” questions, week ending 25 October 2019 (Series 4, Episodes 6-10)
Earlier this month Cardinal John Henry Newman was canonized in Rome. The ceremony took place on Sunday 13 October, the Feast of St Edward the Confessor. I wasn’t there, but I was at the mass in September 2010 when Newman was beatified. It was the first such mass on English soil for many hundreds of… Continue reading Word of the week: Newman
A new series of ITV quiz show “Tenable” began this week, on Monday 14 October. Here are the questions and answers for the episodes broadcast up to Friday 18 October 2019, Series 4 Episodes 1-5 (S4Ep1, S4Ep2 and so on). The format here is the same as in earlier pieces such as this one from… Continue reading “Tenable” questions, week ending 18 October 2019 (Series 4, Episodes 1-5)
Our daughter turned 13 today. Our son turns 15 next month. I am now, literally, living with teenagers. The last time that was true was when I was a teenager myself, many, many years ago. In recognition of this I have dug out another book that I have previously only flicked through, never read from… Continue reading Living with teenagers
Last Saturday Leeds United played at Millwall, 10 miles as the crow flies from my home here in West London. As I have noted many times on this Blog, I have followed Leeds since childhood, but I was not at the game. Millwall won 2-1, aided by a refereeing decision which saw them awarded a… Continue reading Watching Leeds at Millwall
As you may know, McCarthy is one of the more numerous Irish surnames. According to this page on the Irish Genealogy website, detailing the 20 most common surnames in Ireland from an 1890 study, it was 13th on the list. There have been plenty of prominent McCarthy’s in living memory, including Mick (past and current… Continue reading Word of the week: McCarthy
Three times in recent weeks BBC Radio 2 (my radio station of choice) has played “Mama used to say”, a 1982 release by Junior. It reached #7 in the UK charts and #30 in the Billboard Hot 100. Every time I hear the record, including these three recent plays, I recall the same scene. It… Continue reading “Mama used to say”, a musical memory
Here’s my monthly screenshot of the top of the Championship table, the second tier of English football. Like all the others (most recently in this piece) it was grabbed from the BBC website. Like most screenshots included on this Blog since last December, it shows Leeds United, the team that I have supported since childhood,… Continue reading Concentrating on just one game, for a change
Early in 2016, I wrote this piece about words and phrases that seem to crop up regularly in prize-winning fiction. One of them was antimacassar, “a piece of cloth put over the back of a chair to protect it from grease or hair-oil – macassar was used as a hair oil in Victorian and Edwardian… Continue reading Word of the week: antimacassar
A few months ago I wrote, in this piece, about readers in places like Nepal, Palau and the Falkland Islands, thousands of miles from West London where these words are being drafted. I noted that more than half of the countries in the world appear in the basic statistical information provided by WordPress about Visitors… Continue reading More about readers in distant places, and population
The Compartments 