I have posted many items on this Blog about the fortunes of Leeds United, the team that I have followed since childhood. There was usually at least one post per month in the club’s last two seasons in the Championship, before being promoted to “The Promised Land” of Premier League football. I have posted less… Continue reading When your fate is in your own hands
I return to the subject of crosswords and find that everything that I wrote in this piece, back in 2020, still applies. As it says, “I learnt how to do cryptic crosswords at my father’s knee, as it were”, but rarely look at them these days. My father continued to get a daily paper until… Continue reading My father’s way of doing crosswords
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”
The school year here in the UK runs from 1 September to 31 August. If you have a child born on the first of these dates they will be the oldest in their class. Any child born on the last of these dates will be the youngest in their class. There might still be some… Continue reading Daily reminders of being 15, 16, 17, 18
There have been 207 “Word of the week” pieces on this Blog so far. From 1 February 2016, when I decided to post them exclusively on Mondays, there was an unbroken run of 24 weeks each featuring a word that was either in the news or relevant to what I was doing or reading at… Continue reading Word of the week: allotment
This Blog was created in December 2015, over seven years ago. Since then, every day of the year, from New Year’s Day to the Feast of St Sylvester, has been represented by at least one piece, in at least one of those seven years. Some seasonal themes have been covered that do not need to… Continue reading Lent 2023 summarized
Every now then, on these pages, I reflect on the fortunes of Leeds United FC, the club that I have supported since childhood. This season is not going well. At the start of the club’s most recent fixture Leeds sat in the relegation zone, 19th in the table, one place above Southampton at the bottom.… Continue reading A weekend not worrying about football
The clocks went forward in the early hours of yesterday. Our first experience of British Summer Time this year was a cold and wet West London morning but things had cleared by evening. It stayed light until after 7.30pm, as it will do for many months to come. We still have plenty of clocks and… Continue reading What I think of when the clocks go forward
Back in 2016, in this piece, I offered advice about where to get shamrock in Central London on St Patrick’s Day: St Patrick’s Catholic Church in Soho Square. In recent years this advice probably did not apply (lockdown and all that) but this year it has, once again, been valid. But there has been a… Continue reading The price of shamrock in 2023
You might well have heard of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). You might have read, and understood, his major work, “The Critique of Pure Reason”. I tried to, as part of a political philosophy paper at university, but most of what I wrote in that week’s essay came from HJ Paton’s book “The Moral… Continue reading Word of the Week: Kant
The Compartments 