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
Rabona is a word I have been meaning to write about for several months. I had never heard it before March 2021, but it has entered into the vocabulary of football-watchers, taking its place with Panenka. I could try and describe both techniques, but will use a couple of Wikipedia entries instead. As you can read here, “the Rabona is the technique of kicking the football where the kicking leg is crossed behind the… Continue reading Word of the week: Rabona
We continue to subscribe to Netflix, nearly two years after I agreed to my daughter’s request that we sign up for the “free” 30 day trial. I learnt recently that I could reduce my monthly fee down a bit. We are still paying extra so that we can run it on up to four devices.… Continue reading World of the week: Dazzle
The Tokyo Olympics finished yesterday. We had got used to the Olympic Breakfast programme every morning on BBC1, catching up on the overnight action, and we’ll miss it. The show usually involved news of gold medals for Team GB, right up to yesterday morning when Jason Kenny (Keirin, cycling) and Lauren Price (boxing) completed the medal tally to leave GB fourth… Continue reading Word of the week: Sayonara
It took nearly four years, but last month I finally tasted my first negroni, the cocktail that featured in the Weekend magazine in Saturday’s edition of The Guardian. It was described as “a serious drink for serious times … the cocktail for 2021”. For connoisseurs, it was probably the cocktail for several years ago. My brother was telling me about… Continue reading Word of the week: negroni
This piece is about the 4-letter word that begins with “C” and rhymes with “hunt”. In the thousand or so pieces published so far on this Blog I have referred to this word a few times but never spelt it out, and will not do so here. Over the last ten days I have watched… Continue reading Word of the week: The C Word
These “Word of the week” pieces have become rather less frequent in recent months, for no particular reason. I have drafted several posts without finalizing them, but there are still over 170 finished pieces (and over 100,000 words of text) dotted throughout this site about words that have been in the news or come to… Continue reading Word of the week: crucify
Uno, as you probably know, represents the number one in at least two languages (Spanish and Italian are the ones that I am familiar with). It is used specifically for nouns that take the masculine form, though this is not always straightforward. The word for a car is masculine in Spanish (“coche”) but feminine in… Continue reading Word of the week: Uno
Last Friday, Channel 4 devoted the hours after 9pm to the sitcom “Friday Night Dinner”, to mark the show’s 10th anniversary. We have been big fans of the show for the last couple of years and were looking forward to it. There was a documentary featuring interviews with the cast, crew members (including the writer, Robert Popper) and celebrity fans. One of the show’s stars,… Continue reading Word of the week: mischievous
Breakfast TV here in the UK currently offers us three main options: “BBC Breakfast” on BBC1, “Good Morning Britain” on ITV and comedy shows on Channel 4. “Milkshake” on Channel 5 is aimed at young children, and 10 years ago, when our children were 4 and 6, we often tuned in for episodes of “Peppa… Continue reading Word of the week: “Cheers”
