Wet as you like.

I have been a competent swimmer for almost all of my life. I couldn’t humour you with an exact age, but roughly sometime before I was eight I could hold my own in a swimming pool and as the old cliche goes – learning to swim is like learning to ride a bike, only wetter […]

Coney Island Baby.

Lough Neagh is the biggest fresh water lake in Europe. That’s what the Northern Irish will tell you, with just a hint of pride. Look on Wikipedia however and it turns out they might be talking a bit of crap, because there Lough Neagh is ranked as merely the 33rd largest lake in Europe. Perhaps […]

Making balls history.

Poised. That’s a good word to describe the mighty England football team right now. Poised between two towering moments in history. This is surely what history is all about, and many hundreds of years from now old men will sit their gawping grand children in front of them and spin a hushed yarn all about […]

On defrosting.

After weeks of putting it off I decided that today would be the day the freezer got a seeing to. Defrosting the freezer is undoubtedly one the crappiest jobs you can do in the kitchen, along with, at a push, cleaning the oven, scrubbing the bottom of the filter in the dishwasher and carving up […]

Pickity pick.

At 5.30pm yesterday I didn’t much like the idea of picking my own fruit. I still didn’t like the idea this morning as I crawled out of bed with a head as heavy as my heart. I clung to the hope that it would be rained off but Wifey seemed to have already made a […]

Carry On Hancock.

I should have said it out loud weeks ago, when it first crossed my mind. I honestly did wonder to myself if Matt Hancock was ever going to be caught out and so it has come to pass. Not that I knew he was having an affair (other than with himself: a sordid, gripping fling […]

Two jab your body.

That’s it. I’ve been double jabbed. I’ve had a couple of hard pricks in me and all is well with the world. I reckon I must be pretty much untouchable by now. So untouchable that I can now swagger fearlessly through the streets, hug anybody I choose and attend vast orgies, as and when I […]

Background balls.

I’ve been thinking about football a lot the in last few days, for obvious reasons. It started when I realised that I didn’t care too much that Italy had beaten Turkey 3-0. I was also crammed with indifference when Wales clawed back a goal to draw with that font of perpetual footballing mundanity, Switzerland. I […]

For name’s sake.

For someone who doesn’t like them all that much I seem to spend more time than I should thinking about The Sussexeses. Like gout, piles or thrush they seem to flare up every so often, causing pain and discomfort and then, when their work is done and they’ve made very sure you haven’t forgotten about […]

Land of grass and water.

Well, that little heatwave was little indeed. A few days in shorts and a few nights throwing off the duvet, and then yesterday it was back to being a car wash. Wifey caught the meteorological zeitgeist perfectly late Thursday afternoon as she methodically tied cushions to the garden chairs in preparation for an endless summer. […]