Last month I posted this piece, summarizing some of the music events that I have been involved with since last summer. I mentioned a performance that really stood out: “Working Class Hero”, John Lennon’s 1970 composition. “Hammered out on an acoustic guitar, each verse sung without hesitation or prompts, I was reminded of what a… Continue reading “Working Class Hero”
We create our own rules. We establish patterns and follow them, deliberately or otherwise. I have established certain patterns on this Blog. I usually publish “Word of the week” pieces on a Monday. When writing about football, with screenshots showing league positions, I have only ever posted one such image per month. This piece will… Continue reading One game to go
I am still in contact with many of the people I was at school with. Back in February a few of us (seven, to be exact) met up for dinner at a pub in Hammersmith. I had hung out with four of them often in the last few years. (By “often” I mean “at least… Continue reading Old School Ties
The current UK #1 is “Too Sweet” by Hozier, his first UK chart-topper. This is the 10th example of the word “Sweet” appearing in either the title or the name of the act at #1. I could offer this as a challenge: how many others can you name? Usually when I do this I leave… Continue reading Sweet Number Ones
Following on from this introductory piece, here is another “oven-ready quiz round”. Pub Names, Top 10 or not? Here is a list of 10 common UK pub names. Pubsgalore.co.uk publishes a list of the Top 250 most commonly-used names of open pubs at any one time. The list below contains 5 names that are currently… Continue reading Oven-ready quiz rounds: Pub Names, Top 10 or not?
It’s been a long time since I read a book like Timothy Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Work Week”. I read it during a reading binge that lasted for most of 2011. Checking through this Blog I see that I have never referred to it here (over 1,000 posts, over one million words) or an idea from… Continue reading Letting small bad things happen
How are your sleep patterns? Perfect, disastrous, or somewhere in between? Mine are somewhere between those two extremes, nearer to “perfect” than “disastrous”. I expect that’s true for most people. The following 1,360 words are about sleep, leading to a memory about the best hour’s sleep that I have ever had. I’m afraid that the… Continue reading The best hour’s sleep I ever had
Last July, in this piece (“A funeral changes everything”), I wrote the following: I have been on a mission to see live music, and play live music, as much as possible, in memory of the woman whose funeral prompted that first evening in a new venue [a pub in Harlesden where the reception took place]… Continue reading Reflections on my 100 most recent live performances
In 2019 and 2020 I wrote regular pieces about the progress of Leeds United, the football club that I have supported since childhood. Most of these pieces featured screenshots taken from the BBC website of the top teams in the Championship, the second tier in English football. Leeds were finally promoted from that division to… Continue reading 2 points per game (2024)
Following on from this introductory piece, here is another “oven-ready quiz round”, with the same theme as this earlier round. Another 10 words from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet You know about the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, the words that are used to represent the 26 letters of the English alphabet. It starts with Alpha for A,… Continue reading Oven-ready quiz rounds: Another 10 words from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
The Compartments 