The current Pope, Francis I, has not visited the UK. His two immediate predecessors did, John Paul II in 1982 and Benedict XVI in 2010. I was able to attend outdoor masses celebrated by both of them, the first at an airport in Coventry and the second in a park near Birmingham. John Paul II’s… Continue reading Pope Sandwiches
Even before we had children I would often think about things that we learnt at school and try and recall the relevant topics or mnemonics. As I noted in this piece about “Gut” by Giulia Enders, “The digestive system, the journey that food makes right through the digestive tract, has been a source of fascination… Continue reading Mrs Nerg or Mrs Gren
It’s a while since I wrote about any of our favourite catchphrases. I recorded many of them in the first few months of this Blog, and created this Category to find them easily. A phrase that my wife and I have used throughout our married life relates to the best hundred pounds (or fifty pounds,… Continue reading “The best hundred pounds I ever spent”
On our way back to London yesterday from our holiday in South Devon we planned to make two stops, Exeter and Stonehenge. The latter didn’t work as planned but we stopped in Exeter for lunch, at a pub within sight of the cathedral. None of us had been to the city before. Every visit to… Continue reading Holiday notes: Exeter and Stonehenge
I am a middle child: older brother, younger sister, me in the middle. What do you think about that? What does it mean to you? It probably depends on your own circumstances: whether you had siblings and, if so, how many, and the order in which you were born. Many of the families we knew… Continue reading On being in the middle
There are at least two approaches to any writing project. You can plan everything in advance so that you have a clear idea of your progress once you begin your writing, or you can just get started and see where you end up. I am taking the latter approach with this Blog, not planning too… Continue reading No Earworms for June
The clock is ticking. Change is coming. Something we have enjoyed since the 1970s will no longer be part of our lives. I am referring here (the weekend after we learnt the result of the UK’s EU Referendum) to Paul Gambaccini’s BBC Radio Show, “America’s Greatest Hits”. From July 2016 Paul Gambaccini will host Radio… Continue reading End of an era
Earlier this month I took a look at one of our bookcases and realized that there were dozens of books there that I am unlikely to read in the next year or two. I grew up in a house without many books for adults. (I was going to write “adult books”, but that means something… Continue reading Books, shelving and storage
How do you know what to read next, or which radio programmes to listen to, or what to watch on TV? Whose recommendations do you follow, if any? How much randomness or serendipity is there in your choices? TV and radio were very straightforward when I was growing up. We had three TV channels, no… Continue reading Recent Recommendations
Once again my 9 year old daughter’s homework has prompted me to think about language and learning, as in earlier pieces about Adverbs and Homophones. She has studied apostrophes before and it was part of her homework again last week. It’s a good example of something where the broad principles are straightforward, and can be… Continue reading Apostrophes
The Compartments 