BEDROOM SECRETS FOR A HAPPY MARRIAGE: Something I really enjoy doing is reading aloud to Isabel – it’s good practise for probably the only aspect of childrearing I’ll be any good at, and it’s fun introducing her to favourites […]

Club Freaky Trigger Christmas Party: Happy Wobs to all our readers. The Club Freaky Trigger Christmas Party will be on a MONDAY, to best show our committment to senseless Yuletide ruin (and the fact that we could get a venue, and the fact that nothin[…]

Do you want some German pop dancehall? YOU KNOW YOU DO. A current constant on German pop channels, this caught my attention because the band are obviously having monster good fun in the video by dressing up as cavemen and rampaging through downtown D[…]

We met a couple of friendly students in Warsaw who guided us through the station. I talked about football with one of them – a personal milestone for me, and my diligent readings of FourFourTwo‘s pre-chewed football history articles stood[…]

FAUNA OF POLAND: MY GUIDE
“We have no rabbits in Poland” said our guide gravely as Isabel enthused over our pets back home (thriving, thanks for asking). Despite this obvious flaw the country boasts a rich natural fauna as follows.
WILD B[…]

Cheap Food I Love (Polish Special): BIGOS
The guidebooks struggled to say much about Bialystok. A large Eastern Polish town, the last big place before the relative wilds of Belarus, it carries itself half like a seedy frontier outpost and half like a[…]

Where, I was asking a few weeks ago, is a new ‘Careless Whisper’ going to come from? Where is the next ‘True’? All the current pop generation like their ballads – they love the opportunity to show off all those neat vocal tr[…]

TOM’S TOP TWELVE (Part 2) (As Promised) (Before the big pre-honeymoon decks-clearing pop roundup) (Now where were we…)
A-TEENS – “Upside Down”: I now suspect it was just a kind of wilful perversity that stopped me liking[…]

Another Mysterious Brand: except this one I do like. Tastes like nothing else, has heroically resisted the tides of ‘brand expansion’, has never IIRC changed its packaging, and you never see adverts for it. Every time I see it I’m d[…]

Life’s Cruel Lottery: related to Dave’s anguish below – brands that refuse to die! I reached for a can of coke this morning as I picked up my paper, but the newsagent was temporarily out. Of Cherry Coke, however, there was no end. Y[…]