Praha Haha.

Ooooh, Prague’s lovely! That’s what they’ll tell you. It’s what everyone says. Such a beautiful city, like all the other beautiful cities. With it’s narrow, winding lanes and broad, tree lined parades and historic, charismatic streets. It’s got some alleyways too. Never forget the alleyways. Great cities always have a network of charmed, twisting alleyways […]

The Rock and the Roll.

You may not have heard of Taylor Hawkins. If you have then well done, you can expect a certificate in the post in the next 3-5 working days. Taylor Hawkins is the drummer with The Foo Fighters, or rather he was the drummer until he died. It was a sudden death, at the age of […]

Local Parish Blues.

Mistakes likely – if the local parish newsletter can make them then so can I. Every few months my local parish council send me a newsletter. I assume they send out more than one, but if not then I consider myself very lucky. It’s basically everything you need to know about everything that’s going on, […]

A Charmless Third.

They say that the third time’s a charm. They are wrong. Who listens to they anyway? I have been patient and held back my third consecutive entry for the AA Gill food writing award until now, two days after the winner was announced. You will have established even at this early point that the winner […]

Alan-A-Fail.

I was going to write a piece about Russian expansionist aggression, but then I started thinking about something that bothers me far more than that. I wonder to myself: with all the shit going on in the world at the moment do we really need Alan Titchmarsh? What is he for? Whom does he serve? […]

An Idiot Wind.

Lord above, there’s a wind out there. Properly gusty. It’s the kind of weather ‘event’ we keep getting told will happen more, going forward (what a terrible, redundant pairing of words), due to climate change and the impact human beings have had on the planet. Not that this particularly helps. Back in the middle ages […]

Cheerio Prince.

Before you begin – this is not a very late obituary for the artist formerly known as Prince. Just in case you were getting excited. Oh, the relief. Quick, set the bells ringing in every belfry across the land. Issue a new set of commemorative stamps perhaps? Maybe a special bank holiday later this year? […]

The addictive crack of Fleetwood Mac.

Excuse all flaws, this baby has been overdue for weeks and I just can’t bear to fiddle with it anymore. You should be grateful that Fleetwood Mac had much higher standards. Stirred into my dreams a few nights ago was an unexpected sprinkle of Fleetwood Mac. I can’t remember quite what happened that involved them […]

Ready for war?

I wonder how big Vladimir Putin’s willy is. My initial feeling was that it is probably pretty small. He looks like the kind of man who would have a small one. He certainly acts like the kind of man who has a small one, what with all his macho posturing and artillery waving. He looks […]

Try To Look Away.

Somewhere out there is a small group of awful people who get to decide what goes on TV. I’m not talking about the directors, producers, actors or presenters, but rather about the commissioners and the type of people that sit down and decide what sort of programme we might like to watch today; or more […]