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
You may have heard the old expression, “The family that prays together stays together”. I had never heard of it when I came across this alternative take, the tagline to Roger Corman’s 1970 movie “Bloody Mama”: “The family that slays together stays together”. It was the kind of low-budget cult classic that played regularly at… Continue reading “The family that quizzes together …”
Loose threads, dead ends, unfinished stories. Welcome to my world, or more specifically welcome to the world of items on this Blog that need updating. The one that comes to mind right now is here (“Summer bodies are made in spring”). It recorded my first six weeks’ worth of trips to a local swimming pool,… Continue reading The £307 Swim
When I was growing up, we had a medium-sized bookcase filled with children’s books but only a handful of novels aimed at adults. Most of the books we had were published by Ladybird or Puffin. I even managed to read a few of them: “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and the other six… Continue reading “John Paul Sarter, the famous French extensionist …”
Here’s a photo of my vinyl copy of the current UK #1, and the picture sleeve that it came in. As you can see, it’s “Running up That Hill” by Kate Bush, an old-fashioned 7” single. The picture shows her using a bow and arrow. The song first entered the UK charts in August 1985… Continue reading The current UK #1, on vinyl
As a family, we have started to do the daily Wordle puzzle most days. My wife and our 15-year-old daughter have been doing it for a few months. Our 17-year-old son has been doing it in form time at school from time to time. I have only started in the last fortnight, long after most people.… Continue reading Word of the week: bayou
Regular readers of this Blog will know that Trivia and Quiz Questions feature heavily on these pages. Although these topics take up much of my time, I am an occasional rather than a regular quizzer. I do not have many friends who are into this sort of thing, and have not taken part in a… Continue reading 193 countries, and a challenge
Most of the time this Blog does not deal with the leading stories of the day. You have many thousands of other places to read about them. For the last 19 days there has only been one significant news story in Europe: the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There, I’ve said it. If I were living… Continue reading Word of the week: Kyiv
As I explained in this piece (“Bar snack? (9) …”), I rarely do Cryptic Crosswords these days. I do, however, attempt the Quick Crossword whenever I pick up a copy of the Guardian. As I noted here, it is my paper of choice, and you can get it for free at Waitrose if you have… Continue reading Word of the week: onager
Buy at a low price, sell at a higher price. That, as I’m sure you know, is one way to make money. It is something that we have never set out to do, but over the last two years we have acquired many hundreds of items which we are now able to offload at twice… Continue reading Buying for 5 and selling for 10
The Compartments 