Here’s a question for you, if you’re the kind of person who still drinks beer or cider: how many pints is enough? The answer for me, as with so many questions, is “it all depends”. About 15 years ago I would occasionally have a few drinks with an old work colleague, someone I had worked… Continue reading That two pint feeling
I have not driven on UK motorways much in recent years. I spend very little time outside the M25, London’s orbital motorway. In the early years of this century I went beyond its confines most weeks, on the M1, M11 and M40 in particular, travelling to places like Leeds, Cambridge, Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon. Soon after… Continue reading Norbert, Willi, Eddie
Earlier this month, 1966 was one of the featured years on an edition of BBC Radio 2’s “Pick of the Pops”. I’ll be specific: it was on Saturday 6 August, and the broadcast is available, here, until 6 September 2022. It’s well worth a listen. There are many highlights, including #1s by Small Faces (“All… Continue reading “Live my days, instead of counting my years”
You may have heard the old expression, “The family that prays together stays together”. I had never heard of it when I came across this alternative take, the tagline to Roger Corman’s 1970 movie “Bloody Mama”: “The family that slays together stays together”. It was the kind of low-budget cult classic that played regularly at… Continue reading “The family that quizzes together …”
Loose threads, dead ends, unfinished stories. Welcome to my world, or more specifically welcome to the world of items on this Blog that need updating. The one that comes to mind right now is here (“Summer bodies are made in spring”). It recorded my first six weeks’ worth of trips to a local swimming pool,… Continue reading The £307 Swim
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
Back in 2018 I reflected on the price of a pint of beer throughout my lifetime, in this piece. It included various milestones (50p, £1, £5 …) and concluded, “Clearly, the next barrier to be breached will be the £6 pint”. For the record, the £6 barrier has now been breached, many times. If you… Continue reading The £6 Pint
I return to the theme of the “The 4-Ring Man”, originally covered in this piece from 2018. Since then I have occasionally posted photographs of what remains when you drink a pint of beer (usually Guinness), along with examples of how we deal with empty crisp packets. There are links to those earlier pieces below.… Continue reading The 4-Ring Man, in pictures (Part 5, July 2020–May 2022)
You might be familiar with the quote that begins “Try everything once except …” It is attributed to the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. You could always come up with suggestions of your own to complete the sentence. The original advice was “Try everything once … except Morris dancing and incest”, and I am happy to… Continue reading “I tried it once and I didn’t like it”
For most of us, the start of lockdown in March 2020 began a run of 500 nights when we were unable to see live performances of any kind here in the UK. Comedy nights, gigs of all kinds, musical theatre, legit theatre, opera: all closed down. Since July 2021 most live venues have reopened. I… Continue reading “On the road again”
The Compartments 