Hobbies
Crossword No. 216
First correct entry out of ‘the hat’ wins a GP mug. Email entries to me by 6.00 pm Friday, subject ‘Crossword’. Contact here on email Winner of Crossword 215 and am ounce of silver JF [more…]
Blog
20th Century
My Legends of Pop Music – Part Forty – Dire Straits
If get this right, there will be many cover versions by future bands. I shall try and link live versions if they exist from the tellybox or a film, the sound quality may not be [more…]
Fiction
Jinnie’s Story – Book Three – Chapter Sixteen
Jinnie was anxious to settle Willie into British life so while he unpacked and put away his new clothes in his new bedroom she wondered if a typically British dinner would go down well. She [more…]
20th Century
The Board Now Departing
The truck now leaving a back lane behind your local railway station may well be removing the mangled remains of a giant departure board. Why so? Because they’re being replaced, and by creatures not even [more…]
20th Century
The Woman Reporter, Part One
Another chapter from “Special Assignment” by my uncle John Alldridge (published in 1960 and now long out of print) No Half-Way For Ladies When I got my first job on a newspaper twenty-five years ago [more…]
Politics
Ukrainian War Eagles
Two War Eagles, Paula Dobriansky and Richard Levine, emphatically argue in today’s Wall Street Journal the reasons NATO (and therefore the U.S.) must wage an active direct proxy war against Russia: We cannot pretend a [more…]
Arts
A Life in Three Honks, Honk the Second
At the end of part 1 we left our intrepid teenager entering the portals of the famous Foyles Bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, London. Founded in 1903 initially selling secondhand books from a small [more…]
Economics
Russia’s “gold peg”: Lessons for Western investors
It is undeniable that the ongoing crisis in Ukraine has polarized Western societies to an extent unseen in decades in any other foreign conflict. For over a month, we have been bombarded unceasingly by all [more…]
Arts
A Postcard Frae Glesgae
Over the last few weeks I’ve had occasion to visit Glasgow on two occasions, one for an overnight stay and the second time primarily to visit Kelvingrove Museum and Gallery. The happy circumstance of my [more…]