Merry Christmas to you. For the first time since this Blog was set up, over four years ago, I am drafting words on a Christmas morning. The children (aged 13 and 15) have opened all their presents. BBC adaptations of Julia Donaldson books have been playing in the background (“Stick Man”, followed by “Zog”) and… Continue reading Christmas Day, the new New Year’s Eve
Following on from this piece at the start of the year and this one from August, here’s another set of photos showing what remains after a pint of beer and a packet of crisps have been dealt with. They were taken at various bars in London. The concept of “The 4-Ring Man” was originally covered… Continue reading The 4-Ring Man, in pictures (Part 3, Oct-Dec 2019)
Here we are, a week and a day before Christmas. You have probably heard many seasonal songs already, among them “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl. It was Stuck at 2 here in the UK in 1987, kept off the top spot at Christmas by the Pet Shop Boys version of… Continue reading “The Rare Old Mountain Dew”
Just over four years ago, in December 2015, I took my first tentative steps in the world of Blogging with this piece about my local bookshop. The piece is short, a mere 162 words, and it notes that a section of the shop was called “Smart Thinking”. This appeared to be a fairly new category,… Continue reading No more “Self Help” at the bookshop
Last week there was a seasonal news story about hangover cures. I caught it on Breakfast TV rather than in print, and offer this link, from the “Birmingham Live” website, with the details. Titled “Ultimate hangover cure discovered by boffins in time for Christmas party season” it suggests these ingredients: 65% pear juice, 25% lime… Continue reading The perfect hangover recipe
Reflections on hiring bikes in West London; there are over 1,500 words in this piece. These days the streets and pavements of London are awash with hire bikes. It began at some point earlier this century with the arrival of docking stations placed throughout the centre of town, home to extremely robust (and surprisingly heavy)… Continue reading Word of the week: Mobike
Earlier this month Cardinal John Henry Newman was canonized in Rome. The ceremony took place on Sunday 13 October, the Feast of St Edward the Confessor. I wasn’t there, but I was at the mass in September 2010 when Newman was beatified. It was the first such mass on English soil for many hundreds of… Continue reading Word of the week: Newman
Last Saturday Leeds United played at Millwall, 10 miles as the crow flies from my home here in West London. As I have noted many times on this Blog, I have followed Leeds since childhood, but I was not at the game. Millwall won 2-1, aided by a refereeing decision which saw them awarded a… Continue reading Watching Leeds at Millwall
A few months ago I wrote, in this piece, about readers in places like Nepal, Palau and the Falkland Islands, thousands of miles from West London where these words are being drafted. I noted that more than half of the countries in the world appear in the basic statistical information provided by WordPress about Visitors… Continue reading More about readers in distant places, and population
Happy birthday to me, and to all the people I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post from exactly two years ago. This year I am breaking my birthday rule, the one that states that you should have a party whenever the day falls on a Saturday. I thought about it but couldn’t be… Continue reading Breaking my birthday rule
The Compartments 