When our corner of West London is mentioned in the news on TV it is often described as a “leafy suburb”. This time of year, that leafiness is very much in evidence. The local streets are covered with the leaves falling from two specific types of tree: London plane, and lime trees. My knowledge of… Continue reading Autumn Leaves
The phrase “panic buying” has been back in the news in recent weeks. During the first lockdown, in the spring of 2020, the phrase was used often to describe the amount of toilet roll people were buying. Supermarket shelves across the globe were emptied of the stuff. Eventually some of the shops here in the… Continue reading Panic Buying
ULEZ is an acronym that has been in use for a while here in London. It stands for Ultra Low Emission Zone and dictates the cost of driving through various parts of the city. Currently it applies to vehicles in the Congestion Charge zone, which covers the West End, the City of London and a… Continue reading Word of the week: ULEZ
Here’s a set of phrases I use often: “My work is done”, “Your work is done”, “His work is done”, and so on. As you can see, it involves any possessive pronoun followed by the words “work is done”. I use it to describe the conclusion of mundane tasks (watching a TV programme, finishing a… Continue reading Word of the week: Confirmation
This post is the third and final instalment of a brief series about getting our car repaired. It has nothing to do with birth control. Yesterday evening I collected our car (a 13-year-old Peugeot 307) from the service department of our local dealership. It had been there for exactly 13 weeks. It cost slightly less to repair than the initial quote, and for almost all of its… Continue reading Nearly 13 weeks to fit a new coil
Our local minicab office has had a refurb. It had lain empty for a year or two but now the single-storey pair of rooms attached to a nearby house has been done up. It doesn’t appear to be open yet, but I hope it will be soon. At the start of 2016 I wrote this piece predicting that I would not be signing up for the ride-hailing… Continue reading Word of the week: statioons
In the late 1970s my mother made a household change that affected all five of us (my father and her; my brother and sister and me: the three of us were teenagers at the time). She replaced our traditional bedding of sheets and blankets with duvets and duvet covers. Although this switch was made during the summer, I caught a cold within a week of sleeping… Continue reading In praise of duvet covers
I have had the same phone number all my life. It reflects the fact that I still have the same dialling code, and the same postcode, that I had when I was growing up. We rarely use this number (our landline as it is now called) and we get very few calls on it. One evening last month the phone (the… Continue reading A Telephone Tie-break
In recent years, things have changed at many of our local green spaces. In parks, commons and the grounds of local landmarks, designated areas have been left to grow wild. For decades these spaces were weeded, mown and kept tidy. Now they are deliberately left uncultivated for much of the spring and summer. In some cases these… Continue reading Head-high weeds, just like when I was a child
The Premier League began last weekend. As I’m sure you know, it is the top division in English football. This is the League’s 30th season. If you are under 40, or do not follow football closely, you might not remember its predecessor, Division One of the Football League. None of the current squad members played in that division. If they had, they would be at least 46 now, and the oldest player… Continue reading The 50th Premier League team
