Nobody was expecting hard science from the BBC’s Test Your Pet, but even so it left pet owners shortchanged in its attempts to define animal intelligence as ‘doing cool tricks’. This is all very well if you have a dog, otherwise it&[…]

I did something yesterday that I’d not done for several years. I went to a Beefeater Restaurant. Truth is, I wasn’t even sure there were any left. The Epsom Downs Beefeater had been a ‘big night out’ for Isabel and I in the ea[…]

I am not glad that Barnet’s hopes of promotion were scuppered yesterday. I am certainly not happy that it happened in a penalty shoot-out of such simplicity that ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS GO RIGHT LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DID, and you would have scored. […]

The projector went ker-fluieee when I went to see I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead on Saturday, eight minutes into the feature. The interesting looking new Mike Hodges film, reuniting him with Clive Owen from Croupier was thus denied to me &#8211[…]

I HATE MUSICALS3: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Shitty Shitty Bang Bang more like.
Okay, I’ll admit that perhaps that is not the most sophisticated piece of criticism I have ever come up with. (It is equally not the most puerile either). Apparently t[…]

I’ll Take You There by Joyce Carol Oates
This is, according to the listing in the front of this book, Oates’s 86th book in less than 40 years – and since it’s from way back in 2002, she’s probably passed 90 by now. There[…]

The only reason i’m linking to this story is so i can use the line “Snapple Crisis Hits New York” and make you sing frank and walters songs to yourself all day…[…]

when i hear the phrase ‘dumbing down’ i reach 4 my gum…
I can’t quite make up my mind abt Nick Knowles’s Historyonics, a BBC TV series for kids (?judging by the timeslot?), which retells historical events in a form whi[…]

Online Scrabble vs. Literati
There’s no doubt that Scrabble’s the better game ‘ having the same hundred tiles in the bag at the beginning of the game instills and enforces a bit of discipline. Literati, a Scrabble knockoff at Yahoo […]