At the start of the month, in this piece, I wrote about taking out a monthly subscription to a nearby gym, a fitness centre attached to a publicly-run swimming pool. It costs less than a quarter of what I was paying to a privately-run gym earlier in this decade. One reason for joining the private… Continue reading Swimming, and New York City cab drivers
Last summer, during the FIFA World Cup Finals in Russia, I wrote this piece about Lionel Messi, the Barcelona and Argentina footballer. I observed that in several hundreds of hours spent watching Messi and his rival Ronaldo playing for their respective clubs on TV I had never seen Messi score a goal in live play.… Continue reading Lionel Messi: the hoodoo is over
As former Home Secretary Amber Rudd learnt last week, “coloured” is not an acceptable word to describe people of black and minority ethnic background. It is not acceptable here in the UK in 2019, and has not been for many decades, assuming it ever was. I have encountered many people over the years who had… Continue reading Word of the week: coloured
Have you noticed how some people in public life respond to a question by asking their own questions, and answering them, without any input from anyone else? Some British MPs do it. I have given up watching the BBC1 show “Question Time” in recent years but watched it regularly at the start of this decade.… Continue reading Am I the kind of person who will ask a question, answer it, and then do it again repeatedly?
This post is over 2 years old. Thanks for stopping by. Please follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ReillySJ) Here’s my weekly summary of questions and answers from the latest series of ITV quiz show “Tenable”. These are for the shows broadcast week beginning Monday 4 March 2019 (Series 3, Episodes 56 onwards). The format is the… Continue reading “Tenable” questions, week ending 8 March 2019
Here, for the fourth month running, is a screenshot taken from the BBC website showing the top of the Championship, the second tier of English football. Like the previous three examples this one shows Leeds United (the team I have followed since the 1960s) top of the table and Norwich in second place. Previous pieces… Continue reading Enjoying it while it lasts
Here’s a phrase that I heard for the first time last month: “Summer bodies are made in spring”. I caught just a minute or two of Zoe Ball’s Breakfast Show on Radio 2 one morning and that seemed to be the lesson of the day. There might have been a more detailed chat with someone… Continue reading “Summer bodies are made in spring”
Here’s my weekly summary of questions and answers from the latest series of ITV quiz show “Tenable”. These are for the shows broadcast week beginning Monday 25 February 2019 (Series 3, Episodes 51 onwards). The format is the same as in earlier pieces: a list of the “Tenable” challenges (6 per show), a note on… Continue reading “Tenable” questions, week ending 1 March 2019
Just like emirp and plangonologist, here’s another word that hasn’t made it into the Oxford English Dictionary yet: plogging. A note from my son’s school tells me that this week he will be taking part in his first plogging session, during PE, and explains: “Plogging is a combination of jogging with picking up litter (Swedish:… Continue reading Word of the week: plogging
It’s a while since a line from a song prompted me to write one of these occasional pieces about lyrics. It has happened again this month, with a performance by Rudimental on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2. Zoe Ball took over the morning slot from Chris Evans at the start of… Continue reading “How you gonna win when you ain’t right within?”
The Compartments 