The school year here in the UK runs from 1 September to 31 August. If you have a child born on the first of these dates they will be the oldest in their class. Any child born on the last of these dates will be the youngest in their class. There might still be some… Continue reading Daily reminders of being 15, 16, 17, 18
Every now then, on these pages, I reflect on the fortunes of Leeds United FC, the club that I have supported since childhood. This season is not going well. At the start of the club’s most recent fixture Leeds sat in the relegation zone, 19th in the table, one place above Southampton at the bottom.… Continue reading A weekend not worrying about football
Every piece on this Blog is drafted in a document that also contains hundreds of thousands of words that will never be made available for anyone else to read. Every year I start a new one of these documents, with the word “Snippets” and the year somewhere in the filename. These words are being typed… Continue reading Word of the week: gamechanger
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
To some extent this Blog acts like a diary. It’s not a diary that’s updated every day, but the date of each post is relevant. Sometimes I “back-fill” pieces days, or even months, after the event. I am doing it now, posting this piece for Christmas Day 2022 several weeks into 2023. I do the… Continue reading Here we go again (Covid Round 2), and diaries
My daughter is taking her Mock GCSE exams this month. When she started senior school she did well enough in her initial assessments to be selected for Mandarin classes. She was in the “MEP” (Mandarin Excellence Programme), a pathway that offered extra tuition in the language and the prospect of an extended trip to China… Continue reading Word of the week: Milord
You might recall the 1985 hit “Trapped” by American singer Colonel Abrams. It reached #3 here in the UK. He had one other Top 40 hit (“I’m Not Gonna Let You Go”) which I am unfamiliar with. When the first of these singles was in the chart, a friend was telling me about his relationship… Continue reading “I’m Diana Ross” (in two ways)
Just over 30 years ago, in the autumn of 1992, the #1 single in the UK was “Ebeneezer Goode” by The Shamen. The chorus, as you may recall, includes words that sound like “Eezer Goode, Eezer Goode, ‘e’s Ebeneezer Goode”. Or, if you prefer, “E’s are good, E’s are good, ‘e’s Ebeneezer Goode”. The E… Continue reading Got any salmon?
As a family we have started to watch “3rd Rock from the Sun” on More4, Channel 4’s free streaming service. It calls itself “the world’s biggest free streaming service”. I caught most episodes of this US sitcom when they were first broadcast, from 1996 onwards, and again on one of the comedy channels from around… Continue reading “Contains some outdated humour”
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 …”
The Compartments 