This week’s word covers Irish sport and geography (provinces and counties), from the starting point of Leinster. If you live in Ireland, or have spent enough time there, or follow the Irish sporting calendar, there might not be much new information here for you, but that still leaves at least 7 billion people who might… Continue reading Word of the week: Leinster
Today, as you can read in this piece from the Independent, a “pop-up” Shakespeare theatre has opened in York. The Oxford Dictionaries website tells us that pop-up denotes “a shop or other business that opens quickly in a temporary location and is intended to operate for only a short period of time”. In recent years… Continue reading Word of the week: pop-up
Umbro is a company that manufactures sportswear. I occasionally wear their products: short-sleeved shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies. As noted in this piece, I am not committed to any single sportswear brand, though I am rather partial to a bit of Adidas. All of the Umbro clothing in what we can laughingly call my wardrobe was… Continue reading Word of the week: Umbro
One of last month’s “Word of the Week” pieces, Cadillac, was prompted by a question on a Channel 4 quiz show that has been revived after an absence of many years. Originally broadcast in primetime as “The Million Pound Drop”, it now has a 4pm slot and is called “The 100k Drop”. Contestants play the… Continue reading Word of the week: quotidian
If you have been watching “A Very British Scandal”, the BBC drama which concluded yesterday evening, you will know that Rinka is the name of a dog, a Great Dane shot dead in October 1975. According to the drama, and the John Preston book on which it is based, the gun was fired by Andrew… Continue reading Word of the week: Rinka
Harlesdon is a mis-spelling of Harlesden, an area of North West London a few miles from where we live. The correct spelling ends in “den”, like its neighbour Willesden. Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, and Wimbledon in South West London, on the other hand, end in “don”. If you approach the junction known as Savoy Circus from… Continue reading Word of the week: Harlesdon
Like last week’s word (Cadillac), this week’s has been prompted by a question on a TV quiz show: What is the largest member of the grouse family? The answer is capercaillie. It’s also known as the wood grouse or heather cock. Last week’s piece reported that a couple on “The 100k Drop” lost all of… Continue reading Word of the week: capercaillie
Here’s something we learnt earlier today. Which automobile company took its name from the Frenchman who founded the city of Detroit, Michigan? Was it Chrysler, Chevrolet or Cadillac? The answer appears at the end of the following paragraph. Channel 4 have revived their old primetime quiz show “The Million Pound Drop”, but it now has… Continue reading Word of the week: Cadillac
I noted in this earlier piece that the word “spy” had been in the news a lot recently, and that the story still had some way to run. The same is true of the word “Windrush”. The Windrush was a ship that arrived in the UK (in Tilbury Essex, specifically) in June 1948 with the… Continue reading Word of the week: Windrush
How do you explain to a child the concept of slavery? How do you explain that less than 200 years ago citizens in the UK and the USA were legally allowed to own other people, who were treated as property and not as citizens? The subject came up over the weekend, prompted partly by the… Continue reading Word of the week: slavery
The Compartments 