Today, as you can read in this piece from the Independent, a “pop-up” Shakespeare theatre has opened in York. The Oxford Dictionaries website tells us that pop-up denotes “a shop or other business that opens quickly in a temporary location and is intended to operate for only a short period of time”. In recent years… Continue reading Word of the week: pop-up
Last night, for the first time in over a decade, I attended an evening performance at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre here in London. I have been to many matinees there over the last ten years, but nothing with a start-time later than 4pm. The play that prompted me to miss every minute of Spain’s 1-0 win… Continue reading “The Two Noble Kinsmen”
Real names, or birth names, are a regular feature of quizzes. A question on Pop Master earlier today asked the following: “What is the original shared surname of both Cliff Richard and Gary Numan?” I have been meaning to write something about this topic for a while, and that question has prompted me to draft… Continue reading Real Names: 21 questions and a list for reference
Umbro is a company that manufactures sportswear. I occasionally wear their products: short-sleeved shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies. As noted in this piece, I am not committed to any single sportswear brand, though I am rather partial to a bit of Adidas. All of the Umbro clothing in what we can laughingly call my wardrobe was… Continue reading Word of the week: Umbro
Last week, for the final time, my wife and I attended a primary school sports day for one of our children. Our 11-year-old daughter starts senior school in September, so this was the last time that we will cheer her and her classmates on while they throw bean-bags and compete in obstacle races. More than… Continue reading Boys and girls, a 2018 sports day story
For over 50 months, until two days ago, I was in a very small minority of mobile phone users: people with Windows phones rather than iPhones (Apple) or Android devices (Google). As I noted in this piece in 2016, just after my last upgrade, it felt like I was supporting the underdog, “the little guy”,… Continue reading Farewell to Windows phones, and reflections on address books
One of last month’s “Word of the Week” pieces, Cadillac, was prompted by a question on a Channel 4 quiz show that has been revived after an absence of many years. Originally broadcast in primetime as “The Million Pound Drop”, it now has a 4pm slot and is called “The 100k Drop”. Contestants play the… Continue reading Word of the week: quotidian
Just over a year ago I posted this piece, about Dead Pubs of West London. It’s an updated version of something I created for a Quiz Night at my children’s primary school back in 2012. There are pictures of buildings where pubs used to be, and of old buildings that became bars at some point… Continue reading Dead Pubs update (June 2018)
As I noted in this piece on the Projects Menu (“A UK #1 for every year”) I can sing and play at least one UK chart-topping song from every year between 1954 and 2013. This repertoire developed from over 20 years’ worth of learning the odd song here and there and finding that many of… Continue reading More than Once at One (39 songs)
At the end of April, as the English football season was coming to an end, I wrote this piece (“Blue is the colour, five years in a row”) about trophy-winning teams and the colours that they wear. At the time we already knew that Manchester City were Premier League Champions. They had also won the… Continue reading More about teams in blue and teams in red
