There was a brief news story on the radio last week about the sitcom “Friends”. It reported that the show has now become very popular with teenagers, many of whom weren’t even born when the final episode was originally broadcast in May 2004. That was nearly 15 years ago, but “Friends” has never really gone… Continue reading “Friends” and a catchphrase about a sandwich
If you follow a particular sport, and if you have children who also follow that sport, you can pass on to them the things you have picked up over the previous decades: experiences, resentments, wisdom. If your children follow football, you can be the person who explains to them the offside rule, or the difference… Continue reading 2 points per game
My subject is memory. I assumed that those words had appeared in that order in at least a dozen pieces on this Blog, but it turns out that this is only the sixth time. The Memories Menu, and posts that have been tagged with the Memories category, contain well over 100 pieces between them, but… Continue reading The bishop and the chocolate bar
During the Christmas holidays, at a play-date with one of her friends, my 12-year-old daughter was introduced to the Catherine Tate character Lauren Cooper. They watched clips from YouTube on a tablet. Lauren, as you may remember, is the 15-year-old schoolgirl whose catchphrase is based on not being bothered, or “bovvered” about whatever is going… Continue reading Word of the week: bovvered
Last year, and the year before that, a few of us went on a Boxing Day pub crawl. This piece from 2016, and this follow-up from 2017, explain the reasons and the routes taken. The core group for each event consisted of me, my brother (who lives in Spain and most years only spends Christmas… Continue reading No Boxing Day pub crawl in 2018
We usually leave it late to buy our Christmas tree. For the second year running we did it on the Saturday before Christmas (23 December last year, 22 December this year), £15 for a healthy-looking 7-foot fir, or spruce, or whatever it is. I expected to pay more, but that’s all it was. One year,… Continue reading Supply and Demand, and Christmas Trees
Yesterday, Paul Gambaccini’s “Pick of the Pops” show on BBC Radio 2 featured the charts from this week in 1971 and 1988. Can you recall the Christmas #1s from those years? The answers appear below. It’s the kind of information that people of my generation (those of us who followed the charts closely) might retain… Continue reading Christmas #1s, and biting the dust at 52
In many words beginning with “un” the first two letters mean “not”, as in the words unhappy, unwell and unambitious. The “un” part rhymes with “fun”. In other cases, the first two letters are part of the longer prefix “uni”, meaning “one”, as in universe, uniform and unicycle. The “un” part rhymes with “June”. You… Continue reading Word of the week: unanimous
Another little milestone. Over the last month our daughter and son have celebrated, respectively, their 12th and 14th birthdays. I recall a birthday party, soon after our daughter was born, at which a friend kept saying “6 and 8, 6 and 8”, like a mantra. She was looking ahead a few years, to the day… Continue reading 12 and 14
For most of us who follow football here in the UK, the Sky Sports show Soccer Saturday changed the way that we keep up with the action on a Saturday afternoon. The rule about screening league and cup football on a Saturday is very clear and has been in place for my entire life: no… Continue reading “No action as far as goals are concerned”
The Compartments 