“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.” That’s how the saying goes. When I first heard this phrase it was attributed to the comedian Billy Connolly. It has also been attributed to the Victorian-era art critic John Ruskin, the explorer Ranulph Fiennes and the fell-walker Alfred Wainwright, as I noted in… Continue reading “There’s no such thing as bad weather”
“Egregious” is a word that I have never heard in day-to-day conversation, or on the radio or on TV. I have seen it in print and didn’t know what it meant until looking it up last Friday. It came up in this Guardian piece about racism by the always excellent Gary Younge, in the following… Continue reading Word of the week: egregious
What word or words do you use at the end of brief exchanges with people you don’t know? If you pay for something in a shop or bar, what do you say when you get your change or your receipt? If the person who has served you is male, maybe it’s “Cheers mate” or “Thanks… Continue reading Word of the week: man
Today is International Mountain Day. That’s a new one on me. According to its website, here, “The United Nations General Assembly designated 11 December ‘International Mountain Day’. As of 2003, it has been observed every year to create awareness about the importance of mountains to life, to highlight the opportunities and constraints in mountain development… Continue reading Word of the week: Hope
As you may have noticed, Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last month. As you probably know, he wrote “Remains of the Day”, which won the Booker Prize in 1989. Back then it was called the Booker Prize, which is how I refer to it throughout this piece, although it’s known as… Continue reading Nobels and Bookers
Last weekend I began a rather long piece about the 1979 movie “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”, which features Gloria Grahame, one of my favourite actresses. I noted: “She died in 1981 and her relationship with a young actor, Peter Turner, is recorded in his book “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”. You’re likely… Continue reading Gloria Grahame and me
It looks like I’m not the only person who has been thinking of the word fatberg in recent weeks. A week after I posted this Word of the Week piece about it Naomi Klein used the word to describe Donald Trump in her speech to the Labour Party Conference. As quoted in this piece on… Continue reading More about fatbergs
Rest in peace Tom Petty, another singer and songwriter taken from us too soon. His first UK hit “Anything that’s rock ’n roll” in 1977 was the first 12” single that I ever bought and I was privileged to see him at the Marquee Club in London a year later, a semi-secret gig for which… Continue reading Tom Petty RIP
Fatberg is rather like chairdrobe, self-explanatory when you break it down. A chairdrobe is a chair that acts like a wardrobe, and a fatberg is like an iceberg, but made of fat. In fact, as we have learnt through various recent news stories it’s more than that; it’s a mass of fat combined with wet… Continue reading Word of the week: fatberg
20 years ago today Diana Princess of Wales died, after a car-crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Dodi Fayed, her boyfriend at the time, and Henri Paul, the driver of the limousine they were travelling in, pursued by photographers, also died. You probably knew that already. The newspapers and TV schedules have… Continue reading The night Diana died
The Compartments 