Somebody I know has a most irritating habit. He pretends to mishear things for comic effect. I say “comic effect” but the things he says are never funny. That’s why it’s an irritating habit. Here’s an example. We’re watching a football match on TV and an 18 year old comes on as a substitute. I… Continue reading “A Gerbil?”
The derivation of the word “quiz” is uncertain. The Oxford Dictionaries definition notes that it is “sometimes said to have been invented by a Dublin theatre proprietor who, having made a bet that a nonsense word could be made known within 48 hours throughout the city, and that the public would give it a meaning,… Continue reading Word of the week: quiz
The new football season is nearly upon us. This weekend my wife and daughter will be off to Wembley for the Community Shield between Arsenal and Chelsea and I’ll be deciding whether to watch the Leeds United game (away at Bolton) in a pub or on NOW TV, as I did on the opening weekend… Continue reading The New Trivia Season
This piece, from exactly a year ago, describes how I learnt about two of the architects from the Gilbert Scott family, or maybe that should say “the Gilbert Scott dynasty”. This obituary for Richard Gilbert Scott, who died last month aged 93, says that he “represented the fourth generation of England’s greatest architectural dynasty”. A… Continue reading Chatsworth and Devonshire
It was 36 years ago today that Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. I was not one of the 28.4 million people who watched the event on British television, or one of the two million who lined the streets of London to see the happy couple, and nor was my father. Instead we went to… Continue reading A Royal Wedding Double Bill
Last week I wrote about compartmentalization, with its 20 letters and 7 syllables. I noted, in this menu piece, that the only other word with 7 syllables that came to mind was homosexuality (13 letters). I’ve discovered another one. It currently features in trailers for various TV and radio programmes being advertised on the BBC:… Continue reading Letters and syllables
The literal meaning of therapeutic, according to this definition on Dictionary.com, is “of or relating to the treating or curing of disease; curative”. Many of us use it in the more vague sense of something that makes you feel good, something that improves your peace of mind. I used it earlier this month when a… Continue reading Word of the week: therapeutic
Back in May I wrote extensively about my first trip to New York City. This was partly as a test of my memory and also to record, somewhere, the details of that week in 1999. Most of the stories we tell, however many times we tell them, remain unrecorded. Some of the pieces on this… Continue reading The Formosa Café
Our fridge is a little on the cold side. If you push things to the very back of it they might freeze. This is acceptable for bottles of water but not for cucumber. Last week a bottle of alcohol-free beer exploded after it spent too much time at the back of the middle shelf, so… Continue reading How to deal with frozen beer
Back in the 1990s I read many books by Carl Hiaasen, crime novels set in Florida. I enjoyed them enormously, and my recollections of them have merged into an indistinct mix of plotlines, characters and memorable phrases. The memory that comes to mind most often is of a character who always parks in the shade.… Continue reading “Always park in the shade”
The Compartments 