A short piece about a short phrase: “my bad”. I don’t hate it, and I don’t use it. It came up in conversation recently when 14 of us had gathered for a meal on my wife’s birthday. One of the other mums said that she had only just come across the phrase and thought it… Continue reading “My Bad”
My daughter is taking her Mock GCSE exams this month. When she started senior school she did well enough in her initial assessments to be selected for Mandarin classes. She was in the “MEP” (Mandarin Excellence Programme), a pathway that offered extra tuition in the language and the prospect of an extended trip to China… Continue reading Word of the week: Milord
If you pass round Hogarth Roundabout here in West London, or drive over it on the rickety one-lane flyover, you might notice the Tesla showroom on the north side of the A4. It’s on the site of a long-gone pub, The Feathers, which gets a mention in this piece from 2017, along with many other… Continue reading 10 anagrams of tesla
I return to the subject of pronouns, something I wrote about in this post back in 2016. In case you need a reminder of what pronouns are, there are explanations in that earlier piece. You might receive emails these days from people who specify their preferred use of pronouns, typically he/him, she/her or they/their. I… Continue reading UK #1s that contain multiple pronouns in their titles
This piece is about the 4-letter word that begins with “C” and rhymes with “hunt”. In the thousand or so pieces published so far on this Blog I have referred to this word a few times but never spelt it out, and will not do so here. Over the last ten days I have watched… Continue reading Word of the week: The C Word
Many phrases have entered common usage since Coronavirus began to dominate the headlines back in March: “social distancing”, “track and trace”, “immuno-compromised”. A phrase that has been around for many years but has only registered with me in the last few months, when reading articles about Coronavirus, is the “thousand-yard stare”. I first encountered it… Continue reading “Thousand-yard stares”
Have you noticed how some people in public life respond to a question by asking their own questions, and answering them, without any input from anyone else? Some British MPs do it. I have given up watching the BBC1 show “Question Time” in recent years but watched it regularly at the start of this decade.… Continue reading Am I the kind of person who will ask a question, answer it, and then do it again repeatedly?
Last week, on his BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show, Chris Evans played “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand” by The Beatles, a German-language version of their 1963 #1 “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. I remember enough of my O Level German to know that the title is not a direct translation. “Komm, Gib Mir Deine… Continue reading “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand”
It’s at least 12 years since I first heard something described as “meta”. The meaning was not entirely clear. The word comes up occasionally, and although I had an idea of what it means, until now I had never looked it up or used it myself. Last month Kate Nash used the word “meta” during… Continue reading Word of the week: meta
There are signs on some of the busier roads here in West London which read as follows: “Dump rubbish in the street and we’ll fine you up to £400”. The text is laid out rather more dramatically than that, all in upper case, and is printed in different colours and font sizes. It’s on a… Continue reading “Dump Rubbish … and we’ll fine you up to £400”
The Compartments 