I have not driven on UK motorways much in recent years. I spend very little time outside the M25, London’s orbital motorway. In the early years of this century I went beyond its confines most weeks, on the M1, M11 and M40 in particular, travelling to places like Leeds, Cambridge, Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon. Soon after… Continue reading Norbert, Willi, Eddie
“I want to be a tomato.” Does this phrase mean anything to you? If not, how about saying it with the voice of a child, sounding really miserable, about to burst into tears? If it rings any bells, then you probably remember an advert for Prudential financial services from the late 1980s. I have been… Continue reading “I want to be a tomato”
Last autumn, in among the millions of words written and broadcast after the US Presidential Election, there was a quote about green bananas. I searched for it a week or two later but couldn’t find it. Now, several months after the event, I have tried again and found it on this Newsweek page from 7… Continue reading Green Bananas
Here’s a catchphrase I first heard in the 1990s and use from time to time: “You want to take more water with it”. You might need to change the pronoun and verb forms as appropriate. I can pinpoint the date and place where I first heard it: St Patrick’s Day 1993, near our local church.… Continue reading “You want to take more water with it”
Here’s a conversational game that I have been playing since I was a teenager. Maybe you do something similar. You ask a question, the answer you receive sounds like it might be an insult, and you act offended and say, “Alright, I was only asking …” For example, you might be struggling to remember the… Continue reading “Alright, I was only asking …”
Of all the lines in all the movies that I watched with my father, this is probably the one that he repeated most often: “Get this boy a bib”. There were plenty of lines that he quoted from dozens of films (“The Godfather” series, those starring Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, westerns like “The Magnificent… Continue reading “Get this boy a bib”
Diligent readers of this Blog will know that yesterday, 21 September, was my birthday. In this piece from 2017 I listed a dozen or more people who were also born on that date. You can add Joe “PE with Joe” Wicks to the list. He was born in 1986. In terms of star sign and… Continue reading “It never rains on my birthday”
Nineteen years ago today my wife and I were on honeymoon, taking it easy by the swimming pool in a converted farmhouse in Tuscany. The previous evening we had dinner in Florence, about an hour’s drive away, one of the most enjoyable meals we have ever shared. It was at an unpretentious family-run restaurant. When… Continue reading “No decaf. No cappuccino. No cream. Only raspberries!”
Here in the UK, we have been living in lockdown for nearly seven weeks. There is no live sport on TV. The BBC and ITV are raiding their archives. We have had snooker classics on BBC, and ITV are about to show the entire Euro 96 tournament (football) on one channel or another. Yesterday the… Continue reading “The world’s a big place”
Here, for the ninth month in a row on this Blog, and for what it’s worth, is a screenshot taken from the BBC website showing Leeds United top of the Championship, the second tier of English football. I say “for what it’s worth” because it’s the same screenshot that was used in this piece from… Continue reading “Leeds Boy”
The Compartments 