Last month I wrote about adverbs, as a Word of the Week, and mentioned how we used to make up playful sentences ending with adverbs, such as “I haven’t read that long book by Victor Hugo,” said Les miserably. My brother asked me about it at Christmas, and the idea has played on my mind… Continue reading More about adverbs
This is a post concerning the word “concerning”. It means “about”, or “regarding”. When I last checked it did not mean “troubling”, “worrying”, or “of concern”, but increasingly that is how people use it. I find this development mildly troubling. Words change meaning. I’m fine with that. People change, technology develops, new words come along,… Continue reading Word of the week: concerning
Since the autumn I have been revisiting Narnia. Does CS Lewis’s imaginary world, first described in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, count as Universal Knowledge these days, especially for the generations brought up on Harry Potter? As a child I read the seven Narnia Chronicles more than once and have been re-reading them… Continue reading Narnia and Hogwarts
[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. [NOTE: the link in the last sentence, which previously took you to the “Find a Castaway” page, is now broken; this link will take you to the new Home Page for… Continue reading “Desert Island Discs”: the year so far
How many changes would you make to increase your chances of a long and healthy life? Would you eat oily fish (sardines or mackerel for example) twice a week? Maybe you already do. Would you drink more water and drink less beer or wine? Again, maybe you already have the balance right there, keeping your… Continue reading Oily Fish
January’s earworm (“Keep yourself Alive”) has been displaced. The song that’s on my mind constantly these days is “(What’s so funny ’bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” The first version that I heard, well over 30 years ago, was this one by Elvis Costello, where he spits out the words in an appropriate post-punk manner. I… Continue reading February’s earworm: “Peace, love and understanding”
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the season of Lent. It falls earlier this year than most. The New Moon began this week, taking us into the Chinese Year of the Monkey. Happy New Year to you. As it coincides with the start of Lent this (Chinese) New Year might be a better time… Continue reading Things to do in Lent
Last month I received a Questionnaire, an NHS GP Survey, through the post. I dislike Questionnaires very, very much and rarely fill them in, but decided to fill in this one. It struck me that it was worded to make it difficult to say, simply, “I am very happy with my GP and have no… Continue reading Questionnaires
You know Jenga, the game where you build a tower out of wooden blocks and then try to remove one block at a time until the whole tower collapses. The word means “build” in Swahili, as I learnt last year from this article featuring the inventor Leslie Scott and Alan Hassenfeld from Hasbro. I assumed… Continue reading Word of the week: Jenga
The Compartments 