I’ll tell you what pop’s missing at the moment and that’s rivalries. Not feuds, we have plenty of feuds, there’s a feud a day on Twitter I think. Feuds are great but the emphasis is on the stars themselves and what they think […]

A washed rind cow’s cheese from Co Cork, Ireland, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.

We have a wedge of this – an old favourite of mine – for lunch. The crumbly rind is a pale peachy, biscuity orange, and the paste inside’s[…]

Sometimes in the middle of a long tournament you pause for breath, you think about the time you’re spending on all these games, look at the sun shining outside, consider all the other stuff you could be doing and you think to yourself “ma[…]

Pressure. Seasoned PWC-watchers love to see the way the pressure begins to play on the managers as the tournament progresses. Most of the time, the standard of the music doesn’t suffer, but the managers suffer plenty, spending time second guess[…]

The Official Charts Company have launched their new portal, which (if you dig about a bit), offers week-by-week archived charts going back to 1960 with links to buy where such a thing is possible.
The centrepiece of the portal though is of course the[…]

Mark and Eli very kindly helped me with this entry in my It Took Seconds MP3 blogging project, a performance (and something of a bastardisation!) of John Cage’s most famous piece.[…]

Isabel’s South Africa team stormed through Group A, only dropping points once they’d qualified, and even then to the pop might of France. Chris R steered Korea Republic, to second place in Group B despite being early favourites. It’[…]

Now the massive popglut of the final group stages is over, we return to a more sedate pace, though the pressure is by no means off the managers. Big beasts are everywhere. There are no easy games at this level, and there are no second chances. This i[…]

So after nearly three months of managerial mind games and exciting encounters the group stage is finally complete. Sixteen sides have been eliminated and sixteen sides remain. To confirm, the draw for the second round is as follows:
1. South Africa v[…]

Paris is fantastic for the cheese-obsessed. It’s littered with cheese shops vending a huge variety of French cheeses (and a tiny smattering of imported ones).
Bleu d’Causses
This is a cow’s milk cousin of Roquefort, and it looks the[…]