This is something I wanted to talk about on last night’s Lollards but didn’t get around to, to do with lost languages of the UK. ‘Yan Tan Tethera’ were counting rhymes used by shepherds in the North West of England, and South […]

I mentioned on Lollards last night my growing (petty) irritation with the introduction of automated announcements on London buses, whereby the bus route and each stop is announced regularly throughout the journey. This morning I did a small, non-sc[…]

Here’s a couple of food science-y items recently brought to my attention.
Firstly – the hygiene issues surrounding ‘communal dipping’. I’m sure everyone is pretty familiar with this practice, unless you live in a cave or[…]

Halva is an acquired taste – I’ve never successfully convinced anyone who’s not had it before that it is nice, despite my efforts. I think it’s the uneasy marriage of bitter and slightly sickly. Last night I was wandering abou[…]

The seeds of the detective fiction genre were planted with Poe’s 1841 publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, but it was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868) that introduced many of the now classic features of the genre – viz &#82[…]

Last week I went to Hackney Empire to see The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie, produced by Bill Kenwright. The play was written in 1958. I’m not clear how faithful to the original script this production is, but it had a few signs, mainly of[…]

Things most people know about European languages  – One – Spanish for ‘beer’ is ‘cerveza’. Two – English is not in the same language family as French and Spanish. When looking at other European words for beer it is appa[…]