After playing Dungeons and Dragons and other games for a couple of years, I found myself firmly on the ‘storytelling’ side, not the ‘point-scoring’ side, of the gaming divide. I also had precious few people to play with and &#[…]

When The Tripods was first shown I was eleven – just about the right age to be excited and disappointed by it. I can remember a playground buzz around the show, stoked by Blue Peter clips – and I can remember (though more dimly) general a[…]

Scattered thoughts on Love by Beatles Band*.
– OK, a lot of this is, or once was, really brilliant pop music. But why does this artefact exist? (more…)[…]

Mark’s post on twins poses an interesting question – where did kid-lit twins vanish to? – and then lets it tantalisingly hang. So here’s two half-baked explanations!
i. A shift in the idea of kid-ness. When the heroes of child[…]

The Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006 compilation is out now. I’m in it, with a piece you’ve probably already read, and so are a lot of other people including Frank Kogan, Miss AMP, and many more. To be honest so far I’ve only read th[…]

Marketing Week have let us know that comments box regulars Diageo have been busy at the patent office, coming up with these new booze ideas:
– compartmentalised bottles for sychronised layered drinks pourage! Dragon’s Den tastic!
– […]

“As in JR Ewing? Sorry, you must be sick of hearing that.” Not especially, to be honest – the sudden fame of my surname in the early 80s pleased me more than it hurt me. For one thing, there wasn’t an awful lot of playground […]

My most eagerly-awaited comic of the year came out this week: Grant Morrison and JH Williams’ Seven Soldiers #1. The ‘awaited’ bit had come to carry a bit more stress than the ‘eager’: the comic had been delayed for seve[…]

New Product! According to Marketing Week, Guinness are about to launch “Guinness Red”, its first major new product since Guinness Extra Cold.
The new beer will be poured and served like Guinness, and have a similar ABV, but where Guinness[…]

The story of the Moomins, visible within and between the frames of documentary Moomin Memories, is – most crudely – the story of a journey from the radical to the sentimental. The moomins begin visual life as marginalia in Tove Jansson&#8[…]