Last summer, during the FIFA World Cup Finals in Russia, I wrote this piece about Lionel Messi, the Barcelona and Argentina footballer. I observed that in several hundreds of hours spent watching Messi and his rival Ronaldo playing for their respective clubs on TV I had never seen Messi score a goal in live play.… Continue reading Lionel Messi: the hoodoo is over
As I noted in this piece on the Projects Menu (“A UK #1 for every year”) I can sing and play at least one UK chart-topping song from every year between 1954 and 2013. This repertoire developed from over 20 years’ worth of learning the odd song here and there and finding that many of… Continue reading More than Once at One (39 songs)
Last night, around 10.30pm, I finished reading “A Brief History of Seven Killings”, Marlon James’s 2015 Booker Prize-winning novel. This means that I have read every Booker Prize winner. As I have written elsewhere, the words “I have read” mean that my eyes were open and they passed across every word on every line on… Continue reading On reading every Booker Prize winner
[There are over 1,000 words in this post] I am a big fan of the “Desert Island Discs” archive and recommend it to everyone. As I wrote on my Projects page, it’s a remarkable resource. For many years even the most recent episode of the show was unavailable on their “Listen Again” or iPlayer service.… Continue reading “Desert Island Discs”: the year so far
Yesterday morning, just after 7am, I finished reading “The Tempest”, Shakespeare’s last play. These days I get up early if I can. If I get to bed before 10.30pm (which was unthinkable until about five years ago) I generally get up before 6am the next day. If I could control my sleep cycle (which would… Continue reading On reading every Shakespeare play
