On Coronation Nation.

I shall, I must confess, be watching some coronation stuff this weekend. I won’t watch all of it, because it’s true what they say when they say that life is too short, and because on a deep level I couldn’t really care less. But I won’t watch none of it because it is a rather […]

Fit For A Queen.

I wish I had a pair of Freddie Mercury’s shorts. To be honest I’m surprised it’s not been one of my life goals from a very early age. Just imagine, I might have thought as a lad, what it must feel like to belong to a pair of shorts that once belonged to the lead […]

Get Them Out Of Here.

Did I miss the memo, by any chance? Did I not quite take in all the minutes from the last meeting? Have I been hiding under a rock for too long? Should I even bother crawling out from under my rock to ask questions no-one will care to answer? Certainly don’t answer that last one, […]

Right Up the Gary.

There are many places to look if you want an educated glimpse into the sort of ideas that people bandied around, all willy-nilly, in Germany in the 1930’s. Perhaps one might start with Frank McDonough’s The Hitler Years, Triumph 1933-1939. You could also take on both of Ian Kershaw’s volumes on that same little moustachioed […]

Dear Mr Presley.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Elvis lately. He’s always there to be honest, as the sun and the stars, always with a chair at the top table. Not Elvis Costello you understand, because Elvis Costello is like woke culture, retrospective book re-editing, cider or vegan sausages: I know they’re there, but I don’t care […]

On Park Run.

Apparently the record for running 5km outdoors is 13:29. That’s in minutes and seconds, in case you were struggling. I’d definitely be struggling if the only way I could save the world was by running that fast. In fact, struggling isn’t really the best word. I’d be fucked. Buggered. Brutally murdered and dumped in the […]

F*ck it.

As usual January is going so very, very slowly and you would think that the least I could do would be to think of something worth doing. Alas, that is simply not the way I am programmed. Rather than think of interesting things that could go right, but could also very easily go very wrong, […]

More Thor, Less Bore.

To see in another new year, and yet more unstoppable juddering along the conveyor belt that takes us all towards an inevitable doom, I’ve sort of half been watching Harry & Meghan on Netflix. Oh come on, you must have heard of them. It is described as a ‘limited series’ and in many respects that’s […]

Give It A Sly Look.

Apologies in advance, you’ve already missed the shipping deadline. In case you hadn’t noticed it’s almost Christmas. With only two days left everyone is going in for that last desperate rush to make this Christmas as perfect as the one before, a job made much easier by the fact that a perfect Christmas is an […]

On Strike.

What do we want? Better working conditions and a pay rise in line with inflation to offset the spike in living costs due to higher energy prices as a result of the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia in an attempt to wrestle back some of the lands he believes were wrongly granted independence […]