Category: Uncategorized

It wasn’t so long ago that this blog had readers at the Guardian, the Times, Time Out London, the PM programme, Radio 5 Live, BBC Online and, I am told, within Blair’s kitchen cabinet. A year plus of disruption and the consequent reduced frequency and quality of posting has done for most of that I…

The “internet” symbol on my router lit up last night for the first time. It still won’t actually CONNECT me to the entity of that name, but that must come soon, and when it does, I’ll be back properly. They’ve demolished the nineteenth century pavilion at the Edinburgh Academicals ground. When you are surrounded by…

Before: After: I’ve always admired the kind of man who can find himself a hairstyle and just stick to it. I hope that’s what I’ve done. But I can never match the expression with which I came into the world, although I feel it on the inside most days. I was born at eleven o’clock,…

Until very recently, my brother-in-law ran a business that must have featured the world’s most charismatic workplace. It held Europe’s only indoor Mustang dynamometer – a rolling road for racing cars, essentially, which you could stand beside with your ear defenders strapped on tight watching whilst another warpainted drag racer clawed its way to 200mph….

I was here, briefly, in today’s early sunshine. Not for any footballing reasons: I’d ebayed a bike, which refused to fit into the back of my car until I let its tyres down. Recreation Park was just over the road. A friendly face called down from a window. I couldn’t hear; asked him again. “Take the front wheel off!” “No, no. I’ll just give it another push”. (Embarrassed now, and…

Thanks to Gracchi for roping me in on this one. I’m a little late; sorry. The Death of the Princess of Wales (curses on this wretched public computer keyboard): I was in the then-new Clapham Sainsburys shopping for breakfast. I pulled the Sunday Telegraph out from the plastic dispenser, read the headline (“Diana and Dodi…

These Olympics get even better when you consider the medal table from the point of view of the erstwhile British Empire. And not just because you have to shift some medals across to account for Hong Kong: there’s Empire swimming star Michael Phelps and Empire runner Usain Bolt to enjoy too. And our victorious Empire…

Football always comes back like a bull in a china shop, but this year, with those marvellous Olympics still going on, it has returned with all the grace and timing of rubbish thrown over the fence. The news that John Terry has retained the England captaincy only reinforces the hunch that we are going through…

I really, really don’t know what to make of this. What do you think? (ht the Graun, obviously) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8oN58cyp2c] (Using Dutch syntax in English as part of an attempt to learn Dutch? No easy language, after all…)

London is waking slowly this morning to clear skies, fresh air, minimal traffic and a sinking feeling that there’s just no way we’ll be able to match that in 2012. Four years away, and municipal humiliation looks unavoidable already. Like everyone else, I think that that was the very best opening ceremony I have ever…