Today is Remembrance Sunday (and Armistice Day) so I was out in Croydon this morning for the parade. I think that all went well: it was a bit cold, but at least it didn't rain. At the end of the parade, various people came forward to lay wreaths at the memorial while the band played music. I'd normally keep quiet during that, but an elderly ( Read more... )

This is a (true) story that I wrote/illustrated for my nephew, and hopefully other people will like it too.

( Read more... )

When I was doing my A levels at school, we had guest speakers once a week, on various random topics; the most memorable was the hypnotist. (I could have sworn that I'd written about this before, but I can't find any relevant posts, so sorry if this is a repeat.)

( Some stuff that might upset you if you're very squeamish )

Tonight I was out on SJA duty in the West End, covering Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Adelphi Theatre. It's the first time I've seen it (although I've seen music videos of Jason Donovan performing a few of the songs), and I enjoyed it.

( Minor spoilers )

When I was at primary school, I played the recorder for a while (like most children), but I was never very good at it. My main problem was that I couldn't read the music, so I relied on copying the teacher's finger movements, which meant that I was always half a note behind everyone else ( Read more... )

I remember reading an article about TV quizzes a while back, observing that the value of the prize was often inversely proportional to the difficulty of the questions. I don't think the article is online, but quoting from memory: "If you win the grand final of Mastermind then you get a cut glass bowl, whereas you can win a two week holiday on ( Read more... )

I went for a swim last night and I saw a sign up advertising lessons. Now, I think that there are various reasons to learn to swim: it's fun, good exercise, and it could save your life one day. However, I was less convinced by one of the reasons they listed: "Major CV benefits!" This does remind me of Arnold Rimmer (in Red Dwarf) who put BSC after ( Read more... )

During WW2, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour: since they hadn't formally declared war at that point (arguably due to a miscommunication), President Roosevelt described this as "a date that will live in infamy". 60-odd years later, I wonder whether that's true; I'm sure that lots of people are familiar with the event, but how many could name the ( Read more... )

Last week baratron posted a link to this post: Have you ever noticed, nobody ever says books have too many heterosexual people in them? Well, the internet being what it is, it turns out that there are people who make that objection to books. For instance, this post criticises the Harry Potter books for heteronormativity (warning: contains spoilers for book ( Read more... )

While I'm reminiscing (and procrastinating about housework), here's another story from my schooldays. This event takes place when I was about 14: I was in the UF (Upper Fourth), so I was now allowed to go into Horsham (the local town) on Saturday afternoons ( Read more... )