NETTLE KNICKERS! A wonderful BBC science piece where the headline is needlessly gratuitous and fades away to a nice but less shocking piece on textile science. Of course nettle knickers could act as an appropriately natural defence against many preda[…]

BEFORE PARKING BEHIND THAT DUMP TRUCK, MAKE SURE THAT DUMP TRUCK DRIVER ISN’T A DUMB TRUCK DRIVER! Ah yes. We saw that there Harry Potter film last night, it was alright, I suppose, even though Harry is about as scary as Dave Gorman wielding a […]

The curious case of Daara J: Daara J, Senegal’s biggest-selling hip-hop crew, provide a neat illustration of what Alex below (and Marcello in the comments box) are complaining about. We stumbled on Daara J at Glastonbury, playing late on Sunday[…]

I am the Dutch football team of pub quizzes.
Now and again, on my fairly infrequent trips to pub quizzes, the team I’ve been playing for has tied for first place. Hurrah! What an achievement! Split the winnings! Everyone’s happy!
Not a […]

ENOUGH TO MAKE YOUR WEE GREEN: yes, dear reader! I have been caught in the snare of ASPARAGUS yet again. In a surfeit of asparagus, one might add! To those who despair at the weedy and thin specimens of asparagus available down your local Kwik Save, […]

The last ten minutes of The Return are very uneasy for the viewer. Up to this point the film has had one intention, ratchet up the suspense and tell the very simple story. Two brothers return home to find in place the father they never knew. He then […]

So I’d bought basil.
More to the point: for two dollars, I bought a grocery sack full of fresh basil; by comparison, a small plastic pack of basil with enough for pesto for two, or a dish of Thai basil chicken, costs between $1.50 and $4.00 at […]

Local vegetable gardens are high-maintenance right now. In the cool of the morning, it’s picking time: today might be the butterbeans and the corn, tomorrow the rattlesnake beans and the purple hull peas, then back to the beginning with the cor[…]

Some Fathers Do ‘Ave ‘Em or Troy.
So, I finally got round to seeing Troy, and the one thing that struck me was how much Paris came across as an ancient Frank Spencer. He was always getting things wrong, then trying to put them right and […]

It has romance (for my Mum). It has violence (for my Dad). And it does not have much swearing in it.
At least that is what I thought when I left. I enjoyed it too for what it is worth. But then i remembered that Alec Baldwin only really has one line,[…]