A short piece about a short phrase: “my bad”. I don’t hate it, and I don’t use it. It came up in conversation recently when 14 of us had gathered for a meal on my wife’s birthday. One of the other mums said that she had only just come across the phrase and thought it… Continue reading “My Bad”
I do not read as much as I would like to, and I see far fewer movies than I used to. As noted before on these pages, many times, I try to keep up-to-date with two sets of award-winners from the worlds of books and movies: Booker Prizes and Academy Awards (or Oscars). I regard… Continue reading … and up-to-date with Booker winners again
For the first time in just over two years I am up-to-date with Oscar winners, so the following paragraph from my Projects Menu is still true: I have seen every major Oscar-winning movie going back to 1947. By “major” Oscar winner I mean every movie that has won at least one of the following: Best… Continue reading Up-to-date with Oscar winners again
If you follow the game of cricket, you will be familiar with the idea of a nightwatchman, a batsman who comes in at the fall of a wicket in the last few overs of a day’s play. The nightwatchman’s role is to take the pressure off the other batsman: face as many balls as possible,… Continue reading Word of the week: nighthawk
Here’s something I prepared earlier, and never finalized. It was drafted over three years ago in January 2020, the 25th anniversary of my first visit to the USA. I offer it here as a record of that first trip, to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. There are over 1,300 words in this… Continue reading Sundance 1995
During the Christmas holidays, prompted by nothing in particular, I was thinking of three productions of “Richard II” that I have seen here in London over the last 20 years, and the actors who played the title role. The first production, at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2003, starred Mark Rylance. The second, in 2005, featured Kevin… Continue reading 11 Oscar winners on the London stage, and one in Stratford-on-Avon
Take a look at these two beauties, a pair of rotary telephones that we had stored away for many years. They were out of sight but have recently been brought back into the open. The one on the right is the phone that we used throughout my childhood. I don’t remember any earlier ones, so… Continue reading Rotary Telephones
As a teenager I spent some of my holidays working on building sites. I never worked in offices, in hospitality, or in retail, unlike many of my contemporaries. The money was good. University friends in particular were surprised at the daily rates my brother and I could command. He usually earned more, being three years… Continue reading Ickenham and Fassbinder, Summer 1982
The Tokyo Olympics finished yesterday. We had got used to the Olympic Breakfast programme every morning on BBC1, catching up on the overnight action, and we’ll miss it. The show usually involved news of gold medals for Team GB, right up to yesterday morning when Jason Kenny (Keirin, cycling) and Lauren Price (boxing) completed the medal tally to leave GB fourth… Continue reading Word of the week: Sayonara
These “Word of the week” pieces have become rather less frequent in recent months, for no particular reason. I have drafted several posts without finalizing them, but there are still over 170 finished pieces (and over 100,000 words of text) dotted throughout this site about words that have been in the news or come to… Continue reading Word of the week: crucify
The Compartments 