**FIXME: Daddy, I heard on Newsround that they're thinking of making the school day longer, so it goes on to 4.30 ( Read more... )

The problem of disappearing teaspoons has been long remarked on. Probably since teaspoons were invented. Fanciful theories about what causes it abound - they run away with the dish, it's the Borrowers, they turn in to wire coathangers, they dissolve steadily in to coffee and tea, they teleport to a planet far away that is teaspoon heaven, and so on ( Read more... )

I had an idea that I'd write some stuff about wine this evening, how interesting it is, wine tasting, science, flavours, culture, history, that sort of stuff. It was prompted by some musings I had today about whether a small wine fridge is worth having ( Read more... )

Far from everything is right with the world, but given that Remy Martin VSOP Fine Champagne Cognac not only exists but an entire bottle of it can be had for less than a day's pay on the minimum wage, it's far from rock bottom. And similarly, although not everything is right in my life right now, it's far from rock bottom, given that I have a glass ( Read more... )

Most grains I cook using the 'excess water' method, apart from proper risotto where you add the liquid gradually. The exceptions are couscous, quinoa and porridge, and I keep forgetting the proportions I like, and ending up with revoltingly squidgy couscous or inedibly stodgy porridge, so here they are ( Read more... )

One of my deep beliefs is that near misses and close escapes are gifts of enormous value from the statistical gods ( Read more... )

"Better to regret something you have done than something you haven't done." goes the saying. I'm not so sure. (And not just because it makes me think the Butthole Surfers are about to go "Satan! Satan! Satan!" shortly after ( Read more... )

Alcohol minimum pricing, then. It seems dreadfully Hogarthian. Whether or not it's good politics (e.g. in England & Wales, to distract from a budget cut to pensioners, which itself is a distraction from flatlining growth; very interesting to have policy forged in Scotland by the SNP finding its way South like this), it looks like stupid economics ( Read more... )

In retrospect, going to see an RSC production of The Taming of the Shrew was always going to be a bit of a challenging end to International Women's Day.

My current-favourite theory about the play is to treat it as darkly dystopian. Kate's final speech is like the Old Bolshevik Rubashov's confession in his show trial at the end of Darkness at Noon; ( Read more... )

A quick hit-and-run post about the euro. About a year ago, I said it was not inconceivable that the euro failsToday, I asked semi-rhetorically in Another Place whether the Euro was on the roof and wouldn't come down, or merely shinning rapidly up the drainpipe looking obstinate ( Read more... )