The Windows 10 laptop that we bought nearly 18 months ago, for family use, goes through prolonged periods of inactivity. We all use it from time to time (our two children, my wife and I) but during the summer it was hardly used at all. We have a variety of tablets, I use a Mac… Continue reading 942,000 files on a Windows 10 PC
Our fridge is a little on the cold side. If you push things to the very back of it they might freeze. This is acceptable for bottles of water but not for cucumber. Last week a bottle of alcohol-free beer exploded after it spent too much time at the back of the middle shelf, so… Continue reading How to deal with frozen beer
Martial arts have been on my mind this week. At a local sports event recently (“A Super Saturday of Sport” I think they called it) various clubs and gyms were promoting themselves and offering chances to sign up for classes and competitions. The classes that always catch my eye are for karate, for reasons I’ll… Continue reading Martial Arts
We might finally be moving on, saying goodbye to the dance school that my children have attended at various times for the last eight years. Let’s see, is there anything here that could lead you to connect my words to the institution in question? I don’t think so. I have no intention of revealing the… Continue reading “You’ve let yourself down”
Last week the Guardian ran an excellent series of articles, like this one, about plastic bottles. The numbers are staggering. As a species we currently produce a million plastic bottles a minute, heading towards 500 billion a year. I am part of the problem. Please accept my apologies. Recently I wrote about drinking from the… Continue reading Tap water and bottled water
It feels like Trivia has been on my mind for much of the last six months so I am surprised to find that there was no Trivia Round-up in May to accompany those for February, March and April. As those earlier pieces noted, quiz shows and game shows form a significant amount of the TV… Continue reading A trivia round-up for June 2017
Over the years I have told many of the stories and memories that appear on this Blog over and over again. That’s one reason for posting them. If I have told the same story 20 times I might as well make a definitive record of it here, though that might not stop me from telling… Continue reading The best footballer I have ever seen
How much does an apple weigh? How wide is a typical family car (not an SUV or a campervan)? How far is 100 metres, and how fast can you run it? These are the kind of things that children should know (or at least have an idea of) by a certain age, preferably around the… Continue reading Weights and Measures
Can you picture a guillotine? I’m talking here about the device used for executions, especially during the French Revolution: a tall wooden frame, a heavy block with a sharp, angled blade, dropped from a great height to behead the prisoner below, their neck secured in wooden stocks. On Saturday morning I caught about 20 minutes… Continue reading Word of the week: guillotine
We still have a video player that works. It’s an ION VCR2PC “Video Conversion System”. It plays VHS tapes but is not a video recorder. On the box that the machine came in are the words, “Convert your memories to your PC”. I keep it in the box most of the time but last month… Continue reading Copying Home Videos
The Compartments 