Most Saturday afternoons the BBC2 schedule includes a movie and a show called “Talking Pictures” that features interview clips with the director or star of the film. Yesterday the subject was Ingrid Bergman, a true Hollywood star. After a screening of “Joan of Arc” (1948, directed by Victor Fleming), “Talking Pictures” included interviews with Ms Bergman from 1971, 1973 and 1980. The interviewer in the 1971… Continue reading An afternoon with Ingrid Bergman
Another month, another variant. A year after we first heard of the COVID-19 strain of Coronavirus, which has transformed all our daily lives, news emerges of another variant, from South Africa. This follows on from the UK variant announced late last year. Here in the UK, over 100,000 people have died in the last year… Continue reading Word of the week: variant
There’s a full programme of midweek Premier League fixtures this week, every match screened live on BT Sport. Last night’s away wins for Leeds United (at Newcastle) and Arsenal (at Southampton) occupied nearly four hours of our time, but they were the results we wanted. We were happy too about the away wins for West… Continue reading English Managers in the Premier League
Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States. I have waited until now, two days after his inauguration, to write these words although he was declared the winner of the US Presidential Election by most media organizations over two months ago. He is the sixth Democrat to hold the office of President in my lifetime. There have also been six Republican Presidents in that time. … Continue reading Presidential calculations: dates and ages
Today is known by some as Blue Monday. This piece in The Scotsman describes as “the most depressing day of the year”, for the following reasons: “It’s the day when the financial pressure of the Christmas just passed hangs over us most, the weather is at its worst, and the extra pounds we’ve acquired over the holiday… Continue reading “Blue Monday” and the Henry Fern Collection
During the last quarter of 2019 and the first half of 2020 I was on something of a reading binge. I realized long ago that I am not the kind of person who always has a book on the go, the kind of person who fits a regular amount of reading into most days, weeks or months. I can go months… Continue reading Reader’s Block
The town of Crawley, in West Sussex, has been in the news over the last few days. Their local football club, Crawley Town FC, hosted Leeds United in the FA Cup Third Round yesterday and won comfortably, 3-0. Leeds are three divisions and 62 league places above yesterday’s opponents, but it didn’t look that way,… Continue reading Word of the week: Crawley
Here’s a conversational game that I have been playing since I was a teenager. Maybe you do something similar. You ask a question, the answer you receive sounds like it might be an insult, and you act offended and say, “Alright, I was only asking …” For example, you might be struggling to remember the… Continue reading “Alright, I was only asking …”
Following on from our Christmas Eve viewing (“Casablanca”) we settled down on New Year’s Eve to watch another film that won the Oscar for Best Picture: “Rocky”. My wife is a big fan of the “Rocky” movies but the only ones we had watched together were 21st century additions to the franchise, “Rocky Balboa” and… Continue reading Word of the week: Rocky
Happy New Year to you. Last month, in this piece, I wrote about Mariah Carey rewriting UK chart history when her seasonal hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You” reached #1, 26 years after its original release. It had previously reached #2 on four separate occasions, a unique feat for any song. As noted… Continue reading Stuck at 2: now Wham! rewrite chart history
The Compartments 