Teenage Kicks (And Others)
– I sometimes used to worry that they’d sack him. I imagined him looking glumly through records he wouldn’t get the chance to play on the radio. It honestly never occurred to me he might die first.
–[…]

The lifespan of originality as a laudable quality is perilously short. We try to hold up firsts as being somehow significant, but beyond their actual place in linear history they rarely stand out. Maybe Hillary and Norgay were the first to climb Ever[…]

A Defence of Mike Riley
I feel the level of criticism is unwarranted.
He got most of the decisions right. The Ljundberg / Ferdinand coming together was probably the most controversial. It was a push, but Ljunberg’s reaction was to get on with i[…]

GOOGLING CAN SAVE YR LIFE:
this reverses the usual fear i guess but i still suspect mileage may vary (badman: “we have googled and found a thing called ilXoR: what exactly did you mean when you said… ” etc)[…]

INSECTS WHICH COME TO BITS
aged c.3-16 i did not have that much in common with moors murderer ian brady that i can think of, except this: a morbid terror of daddy-long-legses – and i got over mine, b4 you all rush off to the police… neve[…]

I reviewed it here. It was alright. It did not leap out at me, perhaps because it struck me as a slightly more serious children?s film foundation attempt. In Italian.
I got the book for my birthday. Problem is I have seen the film, so I know what hap[…]

Carrot and orange soup is a good way of clearing up a glut of (flatmates) carrots. It is a quick one too, you briskly boil your carrots for only ten minutes before pureeing, it is better if the carrots still have a bit of bite. Warming, yet tangy, it[…]

The experiment is one of the best forms of narrative we have, and one of the most underused. You state your aim, you say how you are going to test it, and then you test it. Results, conclusion and potential closure. As a process it is massively under[…]

The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers is plagued with an inappropriate soundtrack. Not when the film apes and recreates periods of Sellers film career (though the Henry Mancini Pink Panther theme is surprisingly played down). Rather the intrusion of a […]

One of my top 3 fears?
…has to be asphyxiation (a very tricky one to spell as well). However, this isn’t really a run of the mill kind of suffocation-style death. Ever since I was capable of cognitive thought I used to have this really[…]