This is one of Taschen’s wonderful art books – I think they are sometimes disdained because of their mass market production and remainder shop appearances, but they are superb books, always with very high quality text and imagery – […]

Ostentatious Displays of Christmas-ness- An Observation.
Whilst walking home from work, I was taken by the number of houses that had their Christmas trees facing out from the front room window, so that all who could walk by could see. Is there some s[…]

Cor Blimey
So, I was watching popular teen soap Hollyoaks this evening, two of the regular characters were talking about something or another (I think it involved making a sheep costume for a navity play) in the newsagent, when I noticed…someon[…]

Grinch Alert
Last year, following the travesty of Gary Jules, there was much in-pub joshery about how miserable piano-led covers would be the HOT NEW THING. Ha ha, we smugly thought, it will never ACTUALLY happen. But here on Radio 1 is Chris Martin […]

Light Fantastic by Simon Schaffer [BBC4] wednesday nights
I should be nice about the presenter of this show (and can at least spell his name correctly unlike many print listings I’ve seen) as he was one of the teacher’s at the department […]

Expect to see more of this sort of story in years to come, illustrating our (human? Western? European? British? (not just pedantry, it matters!!)) propensity to dramatise change in terms of ending, disaster. Key quote = “New research shows that[…]

We ate goose on Friday. A lot of geese. A veritable gaggle.
Course 1: Toast with foie gras.
The temptation to put foie gras in italics is huge. I assume this is because it is foreign, but may also be because it is so nice that it needs to be marked o[…]

The Advent Calendar Of Comics: Dec 13

I owned this one![…]

Dave S decided to fill that empty void by starting Breaking Ranks.[…]

Hmm, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your toes, Steve McQueen bouncing a baseball against his prison door. All signs of the UK Christmas in the early eighties. Again why exactly The Great Escape became linked directly with C[…]