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
Early in 2018 I posted this piece about body weight. It recorded the fluctuations in my own weight using three different measurements (stones, pounds, kilos) and noted how I lost a couple of stone in 2012, by swimming most days and eating less. Apart from the year up to summer 2013 I have generally been… Continue reading Outweighed by my children
How are your Sunday evenings? Is there a routine built around returning to school or work the following morning? Does the TV schedule play a significant part in your Sunday nights? In our household, there are two series that take up our time on Sunday evenings: the “Strictly Come Dancing” results show during the autumn, right through to… Continue reading The new Sunday evening routine
Uno, as you probably know, represents the number one in at least two languages (Spanish and Italian are the ones that I am familiar with). It is used specifically for nouns that take the masculine form, though this is not always straightforward. The word for a car is masculine in Spanish (“coche”) but feminine in… Continue reading Word of the week: Uno
Last Friday, Channel 4 devoted the hours after 9pm to the sitcom “Friday Night Dinner”, to mark the show’s 10th anniversary. We have been big fans of the show for the last couple of years and were looking forward to it. There was a documentary featuring interviews with the cast, crew members (including the writer, Robert Popper) and celebrity fans. One of the show’s stars,… Continue reading Word of the week: mischievous
Breakfast TV here in the UK currently offers us three main options: “BBC Breakfast” on BBC1, “Good Morning Britain” on ITV and comedy shows on Channel 4. “Milkshake” on Channel 5 is aimed at young children, and 10 years ago, when our children were 4 and 6, we often tuned in for episodes of “Peppa… Continue reading Word of the week: “Cheers”
Yesterday was Census Day here in the UK. Once every decade, in the years ending in “1”, adults are obliged to fill in a form recording details about themselves and their household. I don’t recall how we filled in the form in 2011, whether it was online or on paper, but yesterday it was all online. It was a… Continue reading Word of the week: census
Happy Pi Day to you, belatedly. I write these words in the last hour of 14 March here in the UK, or 3/14 in US notation. Out there in California, Oregon and everywhere else in the Pacific time zone, you still have many hours to celebrate. For the first time ever, my children and I… Continue reading “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course…”
Our listening habits have remained the same for many years. Our DAB Digital Radio is set to BBC Radio 2 most of the time. Occasionally it will be retuned to Radio 4 for “Desert Island Discs” or to 5 Live Sports Extra for some cricket commentary, but we return it to Preset 2 immediately afterwards. Much of Radio 2’s programming consists of old hits. Every Saturday afternoon “Pick of the Pops” features the charts from… Continue reading “Glee”, “Strictly” and chart data
Back in November, in this piece about the word “whitewash”, I wrote about the pool table that we bought for my son’s 16th birthday. I set it up that evening and we have played at least three games on it every day since then. Most days we play at least six games, and sometimes (at weekends, or in the Christmas holidays) we… Continue reading 500 games of pool
